OPEC hostage-taking

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The OPEC hostage-taking was the result of an attack on the headquarters of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna on December 21, 1975. Terrorists captured several oil ministers and their employees and murdered three people.

The leader of the group that describes itself as the arm of the Arab Revolution was Ilich Ramírez Sánchez ( Carlos, the Jackal ). Libya is suspected to be the mastermind behind the attacks . The person involved in the crime Hans-Joachim Klein said u. a. from that Libya's head of state Muammar al-Gaddafi initiated the action to manipulate oil prices . Little did he realize that, but only afterwards.

chronology

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
Comment: Who shot where and when should be provided with sources. + Carlos did not do the "job" despite the opportunity ...

prehistory

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria started the Yom Kippur War against Israel in a surprise attack . Yom Kippur is Israel's highest public holiday.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) deliberately cut production volumes by around five percent in order to put the Western countries under pressure to support Israel . On October 17, 1973, the price of oil rose from around three US dollars per barrel (159 liters ) to over five dollars, or around 70 percent. During 1974 the price of oil rose to over $ 12. The oil embargo took Iran , Algeria , Iraq , Qatar , Kuwait , Libya , Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in part.

hostage taking

On December 21, 1975, the six-man terror squad took a tram across the Ringstrasse from the Hilton Hotel near the city ​​park , where the terrorists had rented rooms, in the late morning . The terrorists got off at the Schottentor stop and walked the few meters to the OPEC headquarters on Vienna's Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring . The terrorists entered OPEC headquarters at 11:45 a.m. without having to identify themselves or checking their bags packed with weapons and explosives. Then they went to the conference room on the first floor of the building, where eleven ministers and high-ranking OPEC officials discussed a possible increase in oil prices.

Around 30 international journalists were in the hallway. Two plainclothes police officers guarded the hallways and the conference room. The terrorists drew their firearms. One of the police officers, 65-year-old Anton Tichler, about to retire, opposed Carlos . “Are you a police officer?” Asked his German accomplice Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann , known as Nada . When the police officer replied in the affirmative, the terrorist allegedly shot and fatally injured him. She is also said to have killed the Iraqi OPEC employee Alaa Hassan Khafali, who opposed the terrorists.

The terrorists were able to bring about 62 people under their control, including all eleven ministers of the OPEC countries as well as other delegation members and their staff. The Libyan delegate Yusuf al-Azmarly , who tried to snatch the gun from one of the perpetrators, was shot by Carlos.

After the first police officers arrived a few minutes later, the terrorists shot out the street-side windows. Three officers tried to break into the building and stormed up the stairs. Thereupon the German terrorist Hans-Joachim Klein opened fire. A hand grenade was also thrown by the terrorists. The security guard Kurt Leopolder from the Vienna alarm department was hit by a projectile, but was able to return fire. Klein suffered a shot in the stomach.

Later, an OPEC employee delivered a message from the terrorists. It asked for a "ceasefire" to bring the two seriously injured, the police officer and the terrorist Klein, to a hospital. Klein was transported to the Vienna General Hospital (AKH). There it was found that a ricochet had caused him serious injuries to the abdomen, with the projectile stuck in his spine.

The OPEC attack was the first of its kind in Austria , and it came as a complete surprise, because no one expected an attack on a target with an Arab background. There were no operational or crisis plans and only a few bulletproof vests . One improvised: During the TV broadcast of a sporting event on Austrian television, an insert was shown, according to which police officers who were in their spare time were supposed to report to the Federal Police Directorate in Vienna.

The terrorists were moderately prepared: only three days before the attack they had received the weapons and instructions from employees of the Libyan embassy (“People's Office”) in Vienna. The killing of the Libyan delegate by Carlos later repeatedly gave rise to speculation as to whether Libya was actually responsible for the attack. Klein confirmed the authorship of Libya at his trial twenty-five years later.

requirements

First of all, the terrorists demanded a meeting with the Libyan ambassador in Vienna. But at that time he was in Prague . Instead, they spoke to the Iraqi Chargé d'Affaires. They then sent the Algerian oil minister Abdesselam from the OPEC building to deliver a six and a half page communiqué in French . This communiqué should be read every two hours on the radio, otherwise a hostage would be shot every quarter of an hour.

The opinions and demands expressed in the communiqué by the “arm of the Arab revolution” - as the terror squad referred to itself - were:

  • Israel must not be recognized by any Muslim state
  • Declaration by Iran as an agent of American imperialism
  • the oil wells in the Arab region should be nationalized
  • the oil states should finance the Palestinian resistance
  • The Arab people are threatened by a “huge plot” in which “American imperialism”, “Zionist aggressors” and “ready to surrender” Arab governments are involved

At the end of the communiqué, the terrorists apologized “for the difficulties that our action brought to the peace-loving Austrian people”.

negotiations

As intermediaries to terrorists joined the chargé d'affaires of the Iraqi Embassy, Riyadh al-Azzawi on, that even the security authorities had offered for it. The terrorists, who kept themselves awake with amphetamine substances, wanted to be taken by bus to Vienna-Schwechat airport the next day at seven o'clock in the morning , where an airplane would be waiting.

In the Federal Chancellery , the members of the government met for an extraordinary Council of Ministers. Chancellor Bruno Kreisky interrupted his skiing holiday on the Arlberg and arrived in Vienna around 6 p.m. Kreisky agreed to the communiqué being read out on the radio.

The crisis team headed by Kreisky set conditions for the terrorists to withdraw freely:

  • All hostages would have to agree to be flown out.
  • All hostages would have to be released after the first landing.
  • All Austrians and OPEC employees living in Austria would have to be released before departure.

The terrorists accepted the conditions, but demanded that the seriously injured Klein fly with them.

In a press release, Federal Chancellor Kreisky announced: “The top priority is to save human lives. Enough misfortune has already happened, and since we know that the threats are to be taken very, very seriously, it ultimately determines our actions. "

The withdrawal of the terrorists

As agreed, on the morning of December 22nd, a post bus was parked in front of the OPEC building - the destination on the windshield said "special trip". The OPEC employees were released by the terrorists who boarded the bus with the 33 remaining hostages - the eleven ministers and 22 delegates - shortly before eight. Then the bus drove to Vienna International Airport accompanied by patrol cars.

The terrorist Klein was taken to the airport by ambulance. He was accompanied by the Viennese internist Wiriya Rawenduzy (1929–2011), who also worked as a doctor for the Austrian Red Cross . Rawenduzy, an Iraqi Kurd who came to Vienna to study medicine in the mid-1950s, heard about the attack on the radio and offered his services in the OPEC building. He knew many employees of the petroleum organization and was also a translator for Arabic and Persian . Robert Danzinger († 1990, age: 63), a senior police officer and designated director general for public security , took over the management of the operation because the still incumbent director general, Oswald Peterlunger (1909–1985), no longer had to interfere in the matter want. Danzinger approached Rawenduzy and asked him on behalf of Kreisky whether he would be willing as a doctor to accompany the injured terrorist on the flight and provide medical care. Another doctor who had been contacted had previously refused this request with reference to his family. Rawenduzy agreed.

A DC-9 from Austrian Airlines (AUA) was made available to the terrorists ; the Austrian AUA pilots Manfred Pollak and Otto Herold volunteered for this flight. After the bus reached the tarmac, Carlos got out and went inside the plane, but soon left. Right in front of the rear staircase leading to the machine, the mediator Riyadh al-Azzawi and Interior Minister Otto Rösch, who had arrived there, shook hands with every hostage. Before Carlos was the last to get on the plane, he also shook hands with Rösch and greeted Kreisky, who had acted wisely . Images of this handshake went around the world and there was a lot of criticism in the international media. In the German daily newspaper Die Welt , the picture was commented on with the words: “Thank you very much for the smooth handling.” Carlos would have stretched out his hand, which he took “in reflex”, as Rösch justified himself. Rösch's handshake with Carlos was discussed again and again in the Austrian media for years, especially in 1985 in the Frischenschlager affair (handshake with war criminal Walter Reder , 1915–1991).

The flight and the end of the hostage situation

The aircraft initially left Austria on an unknown course. Only in the air did the pilots find out about the destination Algiers . There, the shot, seriously injured Klein was taken to a hospital. Some hostages were also released.

The flight continued to Tripoli , the Libyan and Algerian oil ministers and four other hostages left the plane. The terrorists and the rest of the hostages stayed on board.

The plane flew back to Algiers on December 23, 1975. There the last two hostages, the Saudi and Iranian oil ministers, were released against the assurance of safe conduct for the terrorists. The terrorists were housed in a villa. Austria then demanded the extradition of the terrorists. However, this was rejected by Algeria on the grounds that there was no extradition agreement with Austria.

Carlos and his accomplices were able to travel unhindered to Libya on December 31, 1975. According to media reports, Carlos had received an order from the Libyan side to murder the Saudi Arabian oil minister Yamani and his Iranian colleague Jamschid Amusegar , but both of them bought their way out of Carlos with a large sum.

Legal consequences

A major problem for the legal processing of the case arose from the lack of evidence at the scene of the crime in Vienna. The Austrian police were given only one hour by OPEC to examine the premises.

In August 1994 Carlos was arrested in Sudan and extradited to France . There he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two police officers and a Lebanese man and for other attacks . The Austrian side initially considered applying for Carlos to be extradited, but after the conviction was waived. Carlos is serving his sentence in a maximum security prison near Paris .

Hans-Joachim Klein lived under an assumed name in a French village for over two decades. In 1998, Klein was arrested by the French police in cooperation with the BKA and brought to trial in Germany in 2000. He was sentenced to nine years in prison for the OPEC raid. In December 2003, he was pardoned and released. He lives in France again today. Klein is convinced that Libya was the client of the hostage situation. The aim was to eliminate Oil Minister Yamani, who was pursuing an oil price policy that ran counter to the Libyan one. Klein also confirms the murders of those involved in the crime, Carlos and Kröcher-Tiedemann.

Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann was arrested in 1977 after an exchange of fire at the Swiss border. Two customs officers were seriously injured by gunfire. After serving a ten-year prison sentence, she was extradited to Germany in December 1987. In 1990 she went to court in Cologne , but was acquitted of the murder charge for lack of evidence . Kröcher-Tiedemann died in 1995 at the age of 44.

Lebanese Anis Al-Nakasch, known as Khalid , was sentenced to life in prison for murder five years after the OPEC attack in Paris. However, he was released after ten years, with media reports speaking of interventions from Iran. Al-Nakasch later lived as a businessman in Beirut and in a TV interview confessed to his involvement in the OPEC attack.

The identity of the two other terrorists could not be established beyond doubt.

The scene

The hostage-taking took place in the former OPEC office on the former Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring (today Universitätsring ), opposite the main building of the University of Vienna , not as is often falsely reported in the OPEC building on the Vienna Danube Canal , which was only occupied in 1977 . Although the main features of the office building in which the OPEC conference took place in 1975 still exists, the appearance of both the outside and the inside has changed completely after the asbestos was disposed of. Nothing is reminiscent of the time the hostage was taken.

In March 1977 OPEC finally moved into a newly built building on the Danube Canal, which was to remain the location of the organization for decades and which the Viennese also referred to as the OPEC building. In 2009, OPEC moved again, this time to a new building next to the Vienna Stock Exchange . The old building on the Danube Canal was acquired by Raiffeisen-Holding Niederösterreich-Wien and demolished in 2010. In 2013 the banking group opened a new high-rise at this location.

Identified perpetrators

filming

The Franco-German co-production Carlos - The Jackal by Olivier Assayas , published in 2010, is mainly dedicated to the career of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (played by Édgar Ramírez ), but also deals with the OPEC hostage-taking of 1975. The roles of Hans-Joachim Klein and Gabriele Kröcher -Tiedemann took over the German actors Christoph Bach and Julia Hummer .

In 2005, an ORF documentary was created under the title Days of Terror by Christoph Feurstein .

literature

  • Werner Sabitzer: Two days of fear . In: Public Security , Vienna 2006, Issue 1-2 (PDF; 237 kB), pp. 31–35.
  • Ingrid Weiss: Who faced the terror . From the Vienna OPEC attack to contemporary terrorism . Molden Verlag, Vienna 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Days of Terror . TV documentary for ORF by Christoph Feurstein; Austria, 2005
  2. ↑ wien-vienna.at
  3. ↑ Even toughness did not help. (...) Greetings to Kreisky . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 23, 1975, p. 3 , column 1 middle ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  4. ^ From Geneva to Vienna: The way of the OPEC headquarters . Vienna Online, February 17, 2010
  5. ↑ Passive high-rise opened on the Danube Canal. ORF, April 15, 2013