Herbert Amry

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Herbert Amry (born March 21, 1939 in Vienna , † July 11, 1985 in Athens ) was an Austrian diplomat and Middle East expert. In the mid-1980s, despite threats he had received, he repeatedly informed the Austrian Foreign and Interior Ministry about illegal arms deals between the state-owned VÖEST subsidiary Noricum and the then warring Iran . Numerous observers rate the probability as high that his sudden, as yet unexplained death from heart failure shortly after his urgent warnings was poisoning.

It was not until several years after Amry's death that his reports on the illegal arms exports were confirmed by the Noricum parliamentary committee of inquiry and several court cases, which led to the conviction of several managers and the resignation of top Austrian politicians. The entire affair, including the numerous proven cover-ups, false statements, falsification of documents and files by state officials and politicians, is referred to as the Noricum scandal .

In 1986 (posthumously) Amry was awarded the privately donated Bruno Kreisky Prize for services to human rights . Otherwise, his role as a so-called whistleblower , who helped to uncover the affair without considering his own well-being, has not yet been recognized by the state of Austria or his hometown Vienna.

life and death

Political and diplomatic career

Herbert Amry was active in the Austrian 1968 movement during his student days and belonged to the left wing of the social democratic party . He was then a long-time employee and advisor to Bruno Kreisky . Between 1963 and 1966 he was secretary to the then Foreign Minister Kreisky. Amry subsequently worked in the Austrian embassies in New Delhi (1966–1969) and Bangkok (1969–1972). He was then head of the service law department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Consul General in Istanbul and Austrian Ambassador in Beirut (1978–1981).

In the early 1980s, Amry initially headed the Foreign Ministry's security policy department and then became head of cabinet when Kreisky became Chancellor. As a Middle East expert, Amry successfully brokered the Arab-Israeli prisoner exchange between 1983 and 1985, which "freed three Israeli prisoners of war and thousands of Palestinians." Most recently, Amry was the Austrian ambassador in Athens .

Noricum scandal

Amry discovered in 1985 that large numbers of such Noricum cannons were being illegally delivered to Iran and Iraq. Long after his sudden death - which was most likely murder - it turned out that his warnings to the Austrian Ministry of the Interior and Foreign Ministry had been deliberately suppressed and kidnapped by top officials.

As the Austrian ambassador to Athens in 1985, Herbert Amry uncovered the illegal arms export to war-waging Iran, which, as the Noricum scandal , preoccupied the public, parliament and courts in Austria.

On July 11, 1985, Amry, who was to take over the foreign ministry's new development aid section in Vienna, gave his farewell reception in Athens, which the 46-year-old only survived a few hours. The question of whether Amry was murdered because he uncovered the illegal Austrian arms exports to Iran could not be clarified, but it is answered in the affirmative by political experts, contemporary witnesses and Amry's widow:

“First of all, an Austrian ambassador died mysteriously who got wind of the fraud and notified the Foreign Office in Vienna: Herbert Amry, formerly Kreisky's head of cabinet, now head of mission in Athens. [...] Official cause of death in the Amry case: heart failure. The corpse was quickly cremated, and the true story has not yet been clarified. Amry had informed the Foreign Office in Vienna several times about his suspicions, but it is still unclear whether the telex had ever reached the then Foreign Minister Leopold Gratz . The fourth - and crucial - Amry telegram disappeared somewhere in the Home Office. The book authors Kurt Tozzer and Günther Kallinger only found an Amry lock act in the Foreign Office in 1999 in the course of research for their book 'Todesfalle Politik' . "

- The press : The super cannon from Liezen

chronology

On July 4, 1985, Günther Wurzer, the then Austrian trade delegate in Athens, informed Herbert Amry, the Austrian ambassador in Athens, that the Iranian arms dealer Mohammed Reza Hadji Dai received around 100 million schillings (adjusted for purchasing power today around 14.5 million euros ) commission for the Demand the delivery of VÖEST cannons to Iran.

During research, Amry learns from VÖEST representative Georg Loukas from Athens that the cannons officially destined for Libya are actually being illegally delivered to the warring Iran, which Amry immediately reports to Austria.

Hans Pusch , the then head of the cabinet of Chancellor Fred Sinowatz , stated that Amry had informed him by telephone in early July 1985 about the illegal arms transports to Iran. Pusch had informed the Chancellor and suggested Amry to inform the Foreign Ministry about the illegal arms exports.

Between July 5th and 11th, Ambassador Amry officially informed the Austrian Foreign Ministry by four telexes of the clear indications of illegal Austrian arms exports to Iran. Amry's fourth telex is particularly important, in which he mentions the Iranian front company "Fasami" and informs the then Foreign Minister Leopold Gratz through specific names and facts that VÖEST cannons are not going to the official destination of Libya , but are forbidden to the war via bogus customers Iran, which is why he asks Gratz to call you back.

The responsible ministers, state secretaries and their staff claim not to have noticed Amry's fourth telex, which years later was the focus of a parliamentary committee of inquiry , several criminal trials and journalistic research; in fact, they deliberately ignored it and kept it under lock and key. The security director at the time, Robert Danzinger, declared that the four Amry telexes had disappeared from the files after they had been in the cabinet of the then Interior Minister Karl Blecha for several months .

Interior Minister Blecha has unsuccessfully asserted in court that he had not known about the fourth Amry telex in the summer of 1985. Finally, on August 13, 1985, Heinz Hakenberg, the then Counselor in Athens, informed him in detail about the content of the explosive Amry telexes through a detailed discussion.

The later investigations also brought to light that Blecha's then office manager Helmut Bernkopf had falsified file notes by removing references to the fourth Amry telex from 1985 and also inserting a passage specifically stating that Blecha should call in the public prosecutor pleaded.

Anton Schulz, the head of the state police at the time , also confessed to deliberately wrongly dating a file note on the qualification of a tape record between Amry and VÖEST representative Georg Loukas from Athens on behalf of Blecha .

Amry had arranged a further meeting for July 12 with the Iranian arms dealer Hadji Dai, who wanted to provide him with written documents on the illegal Austrian arms exports.

Two days before Amry died, he warned his then press attache , Ferdinand Hennerbichler, that the arms dealers were trying to kill them. Hennerbichler is convinced that Amry was poisoned . Even former Federal Chancellor Kreisky has declared that “Amry did not die on the heart, but on the Gratz”, who, as foreign minister responsible for the ministry, “swept Amry's report under the carpet”. Kreisky has therefore asked Wolfgang Fellner , the editor of the Basta magazine , to take up the matter, whereupon the first concrete media reports about the illegal arms transports were published, which the responsible ministries denied against the existing facts.

Amry was only able to stop illegal arms exports to Iran for a short time. On July 15, 1985 , Ingrid Petrik , the head of the department responsible for arms exports in the Ministry of the Interior, lifted the delivery stop for the Noricum cannons imposed on July 8, 1985 , despite a letter from the Austrian ambassador to Damascus , Herbert Grubmayr, in Vienna had arrived, which had disclosed further details of the illegal Iran business. The then Foreign Minister Gratz banned the review of the end-user certificate in question by issuing instructions. Petrik, who was temporarily also President of the Administrative Court, was later fined in the Noricum trial for false testimony.

The Linz public prosecutor Siegfried Sittenthaler was asked by the parliamentary Noricum committee in 1990 why he simply discontinued the Noricum surveys in April 1986 without taking the four Amry telexes into account. Sittenthaler justified his controversial decision with the fact that Noricum's managing director Unterweger had sent him a letter from the Iranian arms dealer Hadji Dai in which he had revoked his earlier statements that had brought Amry on the scene and started the affair.

“It was surely just a coincidence that Hadji Dai received the first installment of his two million dollar commission on November 19, 1985 from the VÖEST subsidiary Noricum (the transfer was signed by managing director Peter Unterweger) and can no longer remember it afterwards what he had discussed with Amry. "

- Kurt Tozzer, Günther Kallinger: Death trap politics .

funeral

Amry family grave at the Hernalser Friedhof in Vienna

After his death on July 11, 1985 in Athens, Herbert Amry was cremated and the urn was buried on July 31, 1985 in the family grave in the Hernals cemetery (group C, number 133).

Legal consequences

In February 1989, Interior Minister Karl Blecha resigned because of the Lucona affair and the Noricum scandal.

On September 27, 1989, a parliamentary committee of inquiry was set up against the votes of the SPÖ to clarify the illegal arms sales and the suspected involvement of leading Austrian politicians.

In 1993 the responsible VÖEST managers were convicted of endangering neutrality . Federal Chancellor Fred Sinowatz and Foreign Minister Leopold Gratz were acquitted of the politicians involved . Interior Minister Karl Blecha was convicted and received, among other things, a conditional 9-month prison sentence for suppressing documents, which was suspended for 3 years.

Unrecognized role model effect

Amry's information about the illegal arms trade, which was officially sent to the Austrian Foreign and Interior Ministry, was partly ignored in the mid-1980s by the government officials and their employees, and partly classified as “crazy”. Beginning inquiries and investigations were prevented. Amry's perceptions about the illegal arms exports were only confirmed in the context of the parliamentary committee of inquiry, which was painstakingly reached, as well as the subsequent court cases. Nevertheless, his exemplary commitment, which cost him his life , was not officially or unofficially given a special honor, neither officially nor unofficially , despite suggestions from his employer, the Republic of Austria , nor from the “City of Vienna”, where he was born and buried - or naming of the building etc.).

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Petrik lashes out wildly . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten , February 21, 1990, p. 1.
  2. ↑ a b c d Amry's widow is unsure whether her husband died of natural causes . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten , April 23, 1993, p. 2.
  3. ↑ a b Bruno Kreisky : "Herbert Amry was a hero in the truest sense of the word" . Obituary. Arbeiter Zeitung of July 13, 1985. p. 3.
  4. ^ War Exchange between Israel and the PLO. May 1985 ( Memento from June 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Pact with the devil . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1983, pp. 135-136 ( online ).
  6. ↑ In October 2010 the trade delegate Günther Wurzer involved in the Noricum scandal wrote his somewhat strange-looking autobiography Unterwegs (published as Book on Demand ) . Published The Seven Lives of a Trade Delegate describing Amry's sudden cardiac death as a poisoning.
  7. ↑ The super cannon from Liezen . In: Die Presse , December 29, 2005.
  8. ↑ a b President of the Court: Second false statement? In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten of February 14, 1990. p. 1.
  9. ↑ Noricum witness Wurzer loves cryptic things. Amry's mysterious death apparently dampens memory . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten , August 4, 1990. p. 3.
  10. ↑ a b The “Norikum” thriller remains exciting . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten , February 21, 1990. p. 1.
  11. ↑ Norikum. Today decision on politician proceedings . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten , July 7, 1989. p. 2.
  12. ↑ a b c Blechas Noricum turbulence . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten , February 24, 1990. p. 2.
  13. ↑ Bernkopf condemned . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten , February 18, 1992. p. 2.
  14. ↑ Amry-Ahnungen: "Ferry, watch out, they want to kill us both!" In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten of October 18, 1990. p. 3.
  15. ↑ a b Amry did not die of the heart, but of the Gratz . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten of October 19, 1990. p. 3.
  16. ↑ a b The GHN cannon deal on the scales of Justitias . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten of April 3, 1990. p. 3.
  17. ↑ Keyword: false testimony in court . ( Memento from April 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Small newspaper from April 1, 2008
  18. ↑ Noricum Committee gives Gratz and Blecha the lie. In 1986, ex-ministers denied reports on Iran exports . In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten of March 21, 1990. p. 2.
  19. ↑ Kurt Tozzer, Günther Kallinger: Death trap politics. From the OPEC attack to the Sekyra suicide . Lower Austrian Press House, 1999, p. 90.
  20. ^ Judicial scandals in our politics . news.at
  21. ↑ Being able to forget keeps you young . In: The Standard ; Interview with Karl Blecha
  22. ↑ SPÖ veteran Karl Blecha turns 75 . In: Kurier , April 13, 2008
  23. ↑ Bruno Kreisky Prize for Services to Human Rights, 4th award, January 22, 1986
personal data
SURNAME Amry, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH July 11, 1985
Place of death Athens