Lufthansa flight 615

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Lufthansa flight 615
Lufthansa Boeing 727-30C Fitzgerald.jpg

A Lufthansa Boeing 727-100 , similar to the hijacked machine
Accident summary
Accident type kidnapping
place Cyprus 1960Cyprus Nicosia airport

YugoslaviaYugoslavia Zagreb airport

Libya 1972Libya Tripoli airport

date October 29, 1972
Fatalities 0
Survivors 20th
Aircraft
Aircraft type Boeing 727-100
operator Lufthansa
Mark D-ABYD
Departure airport Syria 1972Syria Damascus airport
Destination airport GermanyGermany Frankfurt am Main airport
Lists of aviation accidents

On October 29, 1972 hijacked Palestinian terrorists on the Lufthansa flight 615 , a Boeing 727-100 of Lufthansa with the baptismal name keel to the three surviving assassins of attack on the Summer Olympic Games in Munich in West Germany force the release of prisons.

Flight 615 was to lead from Damascus to Frankfurt with several stopovers . After the plane was hijacked by sympathizers of Black September on a section from Beirut to Ankara , the West German authorities promptly complied with the demands and released the three captured terrorists. The three freedmen boarded the hijacked plane in Zagreb and then flew to Tripoli , where all the hostages were released. The then head of state of Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi, granted asylum to the terrorists involved in the Munich Olympic attack .

For the fulfillment of the terrorist demands the West German government was u. a. criticized by Israel . Speculations ranged from toleration to even a staging of the kidnapping by the German government. The background to this was a secret agreement between the West German government and Black September not to undertake any further terrorist measures against the Federal Republic in exchange for the attackers.

Background: Munich Olympic assassination attempt and consequences

On September 5, 1972, eight Black September Palestinian terrorists took eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage during the Munich Olympic Games . In the further course of the hostage drama, all Israelis were killed: two of them were shot by their hostage-takers while they were being held hostage - the other hostages died during an unsuccessful rescue attempt at Fürstenfeldbruck airfield . Three of the hostage-takers (Adnan Al-Gashey, Jamal Al-Gashey and Mohammed Safady) survived the rescue operation but were arrested and in custody be brought.

The German government feared that it would become involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict . Foreign Minister Walter Scheel said in October 1972 that Bonn had to defend itself against attempts by the participating states to carry their dispute to uninvolved third countries “on both sides of the conflict”. In Israel, the German appeasement policy led to comparisons with the Munich Agreement concluded under Hitler in 1938 .

However, the attitude of the West German government in the Middle East conflict had changed when Willy Brandt took office in 1969. For example, the earlier conservative governments had taken a clear pro-Israel stance (particularly in the 1960s, e.g. during the Six Day War ), which led some Arab states to break off diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic. Diplomatic relations with Egypt and Tunisia were only restored shortly before the 1972 Olympic Games.

The federal German authorities knew of the special status and the numerous sympathizers of the prisoners in Germany and therefore feared new terror attacks aimed at freeing the attackers. Aircraft of the flag carrier Lufthansa and the Israeli El Al were identified as possible targets of such a release . Four days after the assassination attempt on the Olympic Games, such a kidnapping was threatened in an anonymous letter, which led the Interior Ministry under Hans-Dietrich Genscher to consider denying nationals of the Arab states concerned from boarding Lufthansa flights.

Even during the hostage-taking, there were indications that the terrorists knew of possible plans to free themselves if they were arrested. When asked whether he feared arrest and imprisonment in Germany, the leader of the Munich terrorists Luttfif Afif (who died during the attempt at liberation in Fürstenfeldbruck) stated that there was nothing to fear because "there is no death penalty in Germany and our brothers will set us free ".

The abduction

Note: The times are in Central European Time .

On Sunday, October 29, 1972, a Lufthansa Boeing 727-100 was hijacked on flight 615 , which was supposed to lead from Damascus via Beirut , Ankara and Munich to Frankfurt . The aircraft with the air vehicle registration D-Abyd was early morning in Damascus with seven crew members, but without passengers started. During the first stopover in Beirut, 13 passengers boarded. Among the passengers was a Spanish journalist who later published his impressions as an eyewitness to the kidnapping.

The scheduled departure of the aircraft in Beirut was at 05:45 and the flight started with a slight delay at 06:01. Less than 15 minutes after the plane took off, two Arab passengers threatened to blow up the plane if the imprisoned Black September terrorists were not released from German prisons. The explosive devices were hidden in the 1st class section, where they had probably already been deposited in Damascus.

After a stopover at Nicosia Airport , where the aircraft was refueled, the terrorists forced the pilots to fly to Munich-Riem Airport , where the kidnappers had initially planned to exchange the hostages. At around 12 noon, the Boeing reached Austrian airspace. When the kidnappers realized that their request could not be met on time, they changed their plan and the Lufthansa plane had to set course for Zagreb Airport in what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . The plane then circled over Zagreb Airport to put pressure on the German side to bring the arrested terrorists to Zagreb quickly, as the hijacked Boeing's lack of fuel was only a matter of time.

When the news of the kidnapping arrived at the Lufthansa headquarters in Cologne, CEO Herbert Culmann flew with a Hawker Siddeley HS.125 (aircraft registration D-CFCF ) from Condor to Munich, where he joined the local crisis management team around Mayor Georg Kronawitter , police chief Manfred Schreiber and the Bavarian Interior Minister Bruno Merk joined. The measures of the West German government were coordinated by a crisis team in Bonn, which included the incumbent Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Walter Scheel , the Interior Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and the Transport Minister Lauritz Lauritzen .

Still under the impression of the recently disastrous rescue operation during the Munich Olympic hostage-taking, the West German authorities decided to obey the kidnappers' demands. During the hostage-taking of the Kiel there was no special police unit, such as B. the later founded GSG 9 , ready for a possible resolution of the hostage drama. Around 2 p.m., the three hostage-takers imprisoned in Germany were transported to Riem Airport. The Bavarian Minister of Justice, Philipp Held , overturned the arrest warrants and provided the terrorists with the relevant exit documents. The freedmen got on the plane with which Culmann had come to Munich, together with two plainclothes policemen. Culmann decided at short notice to also fly to Zagreb in order to be able to support the negotiations there.

The plane with the released terrorists took off in Munich, but the pilot was instructed not to leave German airspace first. The German negotiators hoped that the hijacked Lufthansa machine would land in front of the plane with the bombers who had been released, but this did not materialize. The kerosene supplies of the hijacked Boeing 727 have meanwhile been reduced dramatically. Lufthansa boss Culmann personally ordered the pilot of the aircraft that took off in Munich to fly it to Zagreb and land there. He met this instruction contrary to the orders of state authorities and invoked an "emergency" because communication with Munich had collapsed. As a result, an investigation was opened against Culmann, but discontinued a short time later.

Twenty minutes after the three terrorists arrived at Zagreb Airport, the hijacked Lufthansa plane landed there and the terrorists were handed over at around 6:05 p.m. Initially, however, the hostages were not exchanged or released.

When the Yugoslav airport authorities, at Bonn's request, refused to refuel the hijacked Boeing 727 in order to prevent a restart, the situation escalated: When the hijackers realized that their plane should not be refueled, they threatened to allow all passengers on board kill. The West German consul in Zagreb, Kurt Laqueur , defused the situation by signing the order to refuel the jet without authorization so that the Kiel could take off towards Tripoli at around 6:50 p.m. After landing in Tripoli at 9:03 p.m., all hostages were released.

This was followed by mass rallies in Libya and other Arab countries, in which the hijackers of Flight 615 and the released hostage-takers from Munich were celebrated as heroes. Immediately after arriving at the airport, a press conference took place, which was broadcast live worldwide. The Libyan government under Muammar Gaddafi ignored Walter Scheel's demands to bring the terrorists to justice, offered them refuge and let them go into hiding. In a large-scale intelligence operation called " Operation Wrath of God ", the terrorists were later tracked down and killed by the Caesarea special unit of the Israeli Mossad .

Reactions

The bloodless outcome of the kidnapping was welcomed by politicians from the then governing coalition of the SPD and FDP as well as the opposition Union parties . This also reflected the public opinion that the expulsion of the Munich terrorists reduced the risk of further terrorist attacks on German targets. The deficiencies in airport security , which were unable to prevent the smuggling of explosives on board the aircraft , were criticized . In addition, there were no sky marshals at Lufthansa , as they were already used at the time at El Al, Pan Am , Swissair and other airlines.

Israel sharply condemned the release of the Munich attackers and accused the West German government of “having capitulated to terrorism”. Prime Minister Golda Meir said the following day: “We have been depressed, injured and I would even say offended that the human spirit has submitted to brutal violence so weakly and helplessly since yesterday.” Foreign Minister Abba Eban lodged a public protest with the West German government and temporarily recalled the Israeli ambassador from Bonn, officially for deliberations.

The Israeli public saw parallels with the era of the National Socialists . This comparison hit the incumbent Chancellor and former resistance fighter Willy Brandt personally. He therefore told Golda Meir in a personal letter that the terrorists' release resulted from a lack of alternatives and an attempt to save human lives.

Alleged involvement of the West German government

Immediately after the Kiel kidnapping and later on, there were suspicions that the kidnapping was orchestrated or at least tolerated by the West German government. A short time after the abduction, Amnon Rubinstein speculated about this in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the title "Bonns Schande": The abduction had got rid of "the three murderers who had meanwhile become a security risk". Disagreements that were repeatedly put forward to support this thesis were the "suspiciously" low number of passengers (only 13 adult men were on board the hijacked Boeing 727-100, although the aircraft type had a capacity of 130-150 seats), the "surprisingly quick" decision to release the detainees and the alleged contacts of the Federal Intelligence Service with the PLO .

Other possible motives put forward for state involvement were West German economic interests in Arab states and the hope of being spared future terrorist activities. In a speech to the Knesset , Chaim Josef Zadok accused the Federal Republic of Germany of using "an opportunity to improve its relations with the Arab world". Abu Daoud , who was largely responsible for the attack on the Munich Olympic Games, claimed in his autobiography, published in 1999, that he had been offered $ 9 million "by the Germans" to stage the release of the prisoners. However, he later refused to repeat or substantiate this claim. The head of the Mossad from 1968 to 1974, Tzwi Zamir , confirmed in an interview with the FAZ in 2006 that he was certain that there had been an unspecified vote between the West German government and Black September .

The Oscar- winning documentary A Day in September 1999, which deals with the Munich Olympic attack, supports the thesis that the kidnapping of the Kiel was a "game planned and agreed by the German government in cooperation with the terrorists" has been. Ulrich Wegener , the founder and first commander of GSG 9, called such allegations in an interview with the film as “probably true”. In Wegener's assessment, the considerations of the West German authorities on how to deal with the hostage-taking were presumably mainly guided by the idea of ​​taking West Germany out of focus for future terrorist actions.

Investigative journalists from Report München published a letter from the Munich police chief in 2013, which had been sent to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior 11 days before the kidnapping began . Although the assassins were actually awaiting their trial, the police chief describes the circumstances of a “deportation” in the document: “In order to be able to speed up the formalities associated with the deportation (...), the public order office has already issued deportation orders Criminal Police are kept. "

The weak points in planning and communication that became apparent to the German negotiators are cited as a counter-argument to such a staged release. Since the situation was chaotic and confusing at times, it is unlikely that the kidnapping followed a "script". The documentary feature film LH 615 - Operation Munich of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation from 1975 traces the bloodless outcome of the kidnapping back to Lufthansa CEO Culmann and Consul Laqueur: Since they acted without authority instead of following the official orders of the government, they are unlikely to have any influence.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernhard Blumenau: The United Nations and Terrorism. Germany, Multilateralism, and Antiterrorism Efforts in the 1970s . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2014, ISBN 978-1-137-39196-4 , pp. 47-9.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Reeve, Simon : One Day in September . Arcade Publishing , New York 2000, ISBN 978-1-55970-547-9 .
  3. ↑ a b Olympics Massacre: Munich - The real story . In: The Independent , January 22, 2006. Retrieved October 16, 2013. 
  4. ↑ CONTEMPORARY HISTORY: “Bad Blood” - DER SPIEGEL 35/2012. Retrieved January 15, 2020 .
  5. ↑ a b c German cowardice. In: Der Spiegel 46/1972. November 6, 1972, accessed April 5, 2020 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e 1972 Olympics Massacre: Germany's Secret Contacts to Palestinian Terrorists . Spiegel Online . August 28, 2012. Retrieved July 31, 2013.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Majid Sattar: Consequences of an attack ( German ) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 9, 2006. Retrieved October 16, 2013.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Matthias Dahlke: Democratic State and transnational terrorism ( German ). Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2011, ISBN 3-486-70466-4 , pp. 70–74 (accessed on October 16, 2013).
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g h i How the Olympic bombers got away with unpunished (German) . In: Bayerischer Rundfunk (Report Munich) , June 18, 2013. Retrieved October 16, 2013. 
  10. ↑ a b Lufthansa timetable . Lufthansa . July 1, 1972. Retrieved July 30, 2013.
  11. ↑ Description of the Lufthansa hijacking on October 29, 1972 . Aviation Safety Network . Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  12. ^ Salvador Salazar Carrión: Relato de un testigo sobre las dramáticas horas del secuestro 1/2. (Spanish) . In: la Vanguardia , October 31, 1972. Retrieved March 16, 2018. 
  13. ↑ a b c Terrorists liberated (German) . In: Die Zeit , November 3, 1972, p. 8. Retrieved July 31, 2013. 
  14. ↑ a b c d e hero of the day (German) . In: Der Spiegel , October 6, 1975. Retrieved October 16, 2013. 
  15. ↑ a b c d e f "Only one thing is certain: stop flying." Lufthansa boss Herbert Culmann on aviation security. (German) . In: Der Spiegel , November 6, 1972. Retrieved July 30, 2013. 
  16. ↑ a b c Israel protests: Release of the assassin a terrible act (German) . In: Die Welt , October 30, 1972, pp. 1–2. 
  17. ↑ a b c d e f Yael Greenfeter: Israel in shock as Munich killers freed . In: Haaretz , November 4, 2010. Retrieved October 10, 2013. 
  18. ^ Günter Gaus: Schlapper State? (German) . In: Der Spiegel , November 6, 1972. Retrieved July 16, 2013. 
  19. ^ Aftermath: hijacking of a Lufthansa plane and the release of the Munich terrorists cause outrage in Israel. Retrieved March 31, 2020 (American English).
  20. ↑ עמוד תיק / פריט. Retrieved March 31, 2020 (he-IL).
  21. ↑ a b Jason Burke: Bonn 'faked' hijack to free killers . In: The Observer , March 26, 2000. Retrieved July 26, 2013. 
  22. ↑ a b Quotations taken from the documentary film One Day in September .
  23. ↑ How the Olympic bombers got away with unpunished. June 18, 2013, accessed March 31, 2020 .