Caesarea (Mossad Task Force)

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Caesarea was the name of a special unit of the Israeli secret service Mossad that was tasked with the murder of the hostage-takers and the people behind the hostage-taking in Munich in 1972. Caesarea succeeded in killing more than 20 so-called target persons (presumably responsible for the attack), although it is disputed to what extent they were actually responsible for the Olympic attack. The first commander of the special unit Caesarea was the later Prime Minister and most highly decorated soldier of the IDF Ehud Barak . Caesarea presumably carried out executions in the 1990s and only officially stopped them in 1994 with the signing of the first Oslo Agreement .

Innocents were also killed in the actions. On July 21, 1973, Ahmed Bouchiki , who was completely uninvolved, was killed in Lillehammer because he had been mistaken for the wanted Ali Hassan Salameh . When Salameh was later liquidated by a car bomb in Beirut , four of his bodyguards and four bystanders were killed. It is unclear whether some of the three assassins who survived the unsuccessful liberation operation by the German police during the Olympic attack and who were released shortly after their arrest by the hijacking of Lufthansa flight 615 , could be liquidated by Caesarea.

The operations carried out by Caesarea were also publicly known under the name, not given by the Mossad, "Operation Wrath of God" ( Hebrew מבצע זעם האל Mivtza Za'am Ha'el - Wrath of God) and "Operation Bayonet" (bayonet) are discussed. - The Caesarea special unit has merged into the Kidon division .

assignment

The official aim of the operations was, on the one hand, to satisfy the bereaved, who after liquidations were often asked by anonymous telephone calls to listen to the news in which they learned of the killing of a person responsible for the assassination. In addition, Israeli officials repeatedly stress the intended deterrent effect. It is clear that the retaliatory actions were also intended to address the traumatization of the Israeli people and to restore a sense of security.

First of all, a list of all those directly and indirectly involved in the Olympic attack was drawn up. This was achieved with information supplied by friendly European secret services. Of the names of the first list, 14 people have become known to date, but it is assumed that the final list of target persons comprised 20 to 35 members of Black September and the PLO .

organization

Caesarea was set up and authorized by the Security Cabinet under Prime Minister Golda Meir in the fall of 1972. Michael "Mike" Harari set up and managed the unit . The hard core of Caesarea presumably comprised around 15 agents who formed five teams dealing with different tasks (the team names are letters of the Hebrew alphabet): "Aleph", consisted of two professional killers; "Bet" were two agents for covering the Alephs, "Heth" were two agents who were to take over the logistical organization on site, such as booking hotels, apartments, rental cars, etc.; "Ayin" comprised between six and eight agents who formed the backbone of the operation, shadowing targets, preparing escape routes, etc .; After all, “Qoph” consisted of two communication specialists. According to other sources, Harari may have commanded three Caesarea teams of 12 agents each, divided into logistics, surveillance, and liquidation groups. The individual killings are said to have been authorized directly by Golda Meir. Allegedly, “court hearings” about those to be liquidated took place in the Israeli cabinet. It is also possible that not all of the actions were carried out on behalf of the Israeli government.

Operations

Oct. 16, 1972 - Assassination attempt on Abdel Wael Zwaiter

During the first Caesarea action on October 16, 1972, the Palestinian Abdel Wael Zwaiter was shot twelve times in Rome by two Mossad agents in the lobby of his house. At that time Zwaiter was the official representative of the PLO in Italy. While Italy unofficially claimed that he was involved in the unsuccessful hijacking of an El Al plane as a member of Black September , this was denied by the PLO. Abu Iyad , the PLO's deputy chief, however, claimed that Zwaiter had "vigorously" condemned terrorism.

Dec. 08, 1972 - Assassination attempt on Mahmoud Hamshari

The second attack in Caesarea was on December 8, 1972, against the PLO representative in France, Dr. Mahmoud Hamshari . An agent posing as a journalist gave a team access to Hamshari's apartment, where a bomb was installed under the desk phone. The "journalist" made sure of the presence of Hamshari by calling, whereupon an ignition signal was sent over the phone. Hamshari did not die immediately, but succumbed to his injuries within a month. The reason for his liquidation was that Israel believed him to be the head of Black September in France.

Jan. 24, 1973 - Assassination attempt on Hussein Al Bashir

On the evening of January 24, 1973, Hussein Al Bashir (Hussein Abad Al Chir), the Fatah representative in Cyprus , was killed in his hotel room in Nicosia by a bomb set off remotely by Caesarea. Israel took him to be the head of Black September in Cyprus. However, his close ties to the KGB may also have been the reason for his liquidation .

Apr. 06, 1973 - Assassination attempt on Basil Al-Kubaissi

Dr. Basil Al-Kubaissi , professor of law at the American University of Beirut , was killed by two Caesarea members on April 6, 1973, when he returned from dinner in Paris with twelve gunshots. He was suspected by Israel of assisting Black September in obtaining arms and of having been involved in other Palestinian actions.

Apr. 09, 1973 - Operation Spring of Youth (Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, Kamal Nasser)

Since a number of targets of liquidation list in well-secured houses in Lebanon lived and were therefore not accessible by previous attack methods, Caesarea launched the Operation Spring of Youth ( Operation Spring of Youth ). On the night of 9 to 10 April 1973 penetrated Israeli Special Forces Units-Matkal commandos, a team paratroopers and one of the Shayetet 13 , the Israeli command - frogmen to Beirut and Sidon one. There they killed some high-ranking members of the PLO and Black September , u. a. Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar ( Abu Youssef ), the Black September command officer and PLO official, Kamal Adwan , a Black September command and intelligence officer and head of all terrorist operations on Israeli territory, and Kamal Nasser , the PLO spokesman. Youssef and his wife were killed by gunfire in their bathroom when a police force stormed their Beirut apartment.

Apr. 11, 1973 - Attacks on Zaiad Muchasi, Abdel Hamid Shibi and Abdel Hadi Nakaa

The operation in Lebanon was quickly followed by three more attacks in Athens and Rome . Zaiad Muchasi , the successor to Hussein Al Bashir in Cyprus , was killed with an incendiary bomb in his Athens hotel . Two low- ranking members of Black September, Abdel Hamid Shibi and Abdel Hadi Nakaa , were injured in their vehicle in Rome.

Jun. 28, 1973 - Assassination attempt on Mohammed Boudia

Caesarea later followed up on Mohammed Boudia , the Algerian-born director of operations for Black September in France. He died on June 28, 1973 from an anti-personnel mine placed by the Mossad under the seat of his car, the effect of which was reinforced by nuts and bolts.

Jul. 21, 1973 - The Lillehammer Affair

Obviously having become negligent due to the successes achieved so far, Caesarea tried on July 21, 1973 to liquidate Ali Hassan Salameh, who was supposedly tracked down in Lillehammer, without sufficient verification of his identity. As a result, the Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchiki, who looked slightly similar to Salameh, was erroneously killed. Six members of the killing squad, consisting of at least nine people, were arrested, the rest, including the shooters and the head of operations, escaped undetected. During the trial, five agents were sentenced to between five and a half and two years in prison, and one was acquitted. Norway had rejected Israel's failure to prosecute interventions. The penalties, however, remained well below the minimum penalties customary in Norway and had hardly any practical significance due to the generous leave regulations. In addition, the agents were released in 1975 and deported to Israel. As expected, an extradition request from Norway for the head of operations Harari was rejected by Israel. Due to international outrage over the affair, Golda Meir was forced to officially give orders to suspend the liquidations.

January 22, 1979 - Assassination attempt on Ali Hassan Salameh ("Red Prince")

After a five-year hiatus, the liquidations were resumed under Prime Minister Menachem Begin . In the course of this, the persecution of Ali Hassan Salameh , who was regarded as the so-called "Red Prince" as head of the Black September Force 17 and was seen as the initiator and planner of the Olympic assassination, was primarily continued . The Mossad began to trace Salameh's movements and located him in Beirut in the late autumn of 1978. The London-born student Erika Maria Chambers was recruited as an agent by the Mossad during her studies in Tel Aviv in 1973, trained and personally assigned to Salameh by Mike Harari . She traveled to Beirut on her British passport in 1978, rented an apartment there on Rue Verdun, one of Salameh's frequent streets, and sought his company. She succeeded in establishing contact and researching his movement profile and daily habits. Several other agents were brought to Beirut under aliases, including Peter Scriver and Ronald Kolberg.

With the help of the information obtained from Erika Chambers, a VW vehicle was prepared with plastic explosives in January 1979 and placed within sight of her apartment on Rue Verdun. At 3:35 a.m., Salameh, accompanied by four bodyguards, was driving down the street in a Chevrolet Station Wagon when the car bomb in the car was detonated remotely. With Salameh, all occupants of the vehicle and a number of uninvolved passers-by, including a German nun and an English student, died (some sources speak of four people killed, the ZDF documentary The Olympics Murder of a dozen innocent people). The successful liquidation of Salameh was at least the fifth Mossad attack on him. It was not until December 2001 that it became known that Salameh was also responsible for various attacks in the Far East.

June 27, 1981 - Unsuccessful assassination attempt on Abu Daoud

Abu Daoud , a commander of the Black September group , who openly admitted to having helped plan the Olympic attack, was gunned down on June 27, 1981 in the lobby of the Victoria Hotel in Warsaw , but survived despite serious injuries. He claimed that the Mossad was behind the attack. However, a splinter group of the PLO may also be responsible for this.

Further liquidations associated with Caesarea

A whole series of liquidations or liquidation attempts were assigned to Caesarea, although it is not certain whether they were actually carried out by the Mossad.

  • On July 27, 1979, Zuheir Mohsen , the PLO's military chief , was gunned down shortly after leaving the casino in Cannes . In addition to the Mossad, other Palestinians and Egypt have been blamed for this.
  • On June 8, 1992, PLO chief Atef Bseiso was shot dead by two killers with silenced weapons. Klein and the PLO accuse the Mossad, on the other hand there are indications that the Abu Nidal organization was behind the attack.

Controversial successes in the pursuit of the Munich attackers

Three of the eight Munich attackers had survived the hostage rescue attempt by the German police in Fürstenfeldbruck: Jamal Al-Gashey , Adnan Al-Gashey and Mohammed Safady . They were arrested, but a few weeks later they were exchanged for passengers and crew of the hijacked Lufthansa plane "Kiel" . Allegedly, both Adnan Al-Gashey and Mohammed Safady were killed a few years after the Olympic attack. Al-Gashey is said to have been tracked down while making contact with a cousin in a Gulf state. Safady was discovered while maintaining contact with his family in Lebanon. However, this is denied by Aaron Klein, who claims that Adnan died of heart failure in the 1970s and that Safady was still alive in 2004. Jamal Al-Gashey hid in North Africa for some time. He is believed to still live there. In 1999 he interviewed director Kevin Macdonald for the documentary One Day in September .

Intentional but not carried out killing of Abu Iyad

The killing of Abu Iyad was obviously deliberate, but never succeeded. He was eventually murdered on behalf of his PLO rival Abu Daoud .

Further actions

In addition to the murders, Caesarea took a number of other measures to retaliate for the Olympic attack and to deter future terrorists. Ostrovsky already claimed that this included methods of psychological warfare , as confirmed by an Israeli agent appearing in the 2006 documentary "The Olympia Murder". Among other things, death notices of surviving terrorists were placed and detailed information about individual - sometimes supposed - activists were leaked to the press and state organs. In Germany this triggered the largest wave of expulsions of Arabs in the history of the Federal Republic. The ministerial advisor responsible at the time and later Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel confirmed that innocent and innocent people were also deported according to what was not entirely the rule of law. According to Reeve, low-ranking Palestinian activists are said to have been telephoned and told that they are known and that they should be careful not to take part in Palestinian actions. A number of letter bomb attacks were carried out across Europe against Palestinian officials. According to Morris, people in Algeria and Libya and Palestinian students in Bonn and Copenhagen and a representative of the Red Cross in Stockholm were injured in these non-fatal attacks. Klein reports on a failed attack on two Palestinians in Cairo, in which a bomb is said to have failed.

Well-known members of Caesarea

  • Dan Aerbel allegedly briefed the Norwegian government on Israel's nuclear bomb program.
  • Dietmar "Dani" Claudeaux, a German with French roots. Claudeaux was suspected by the French authorities of being involved in the shooting of Dr. Basil Al-Kubaissi in Paris. Claudeaux is said to have been the shooter. Allegedly, according to Tinnin, it was Claudeaux who shot Fathi Shaqaqai in Malta in 1995.

Cinematic processing

Fictional

  • Law of Terror ( Sword of Gideon , 1986)
  • In his feature film Munich , released in 2005, Steven Spielberg tells the story of a Mossad unit that carried out a series of liquidations in retaliation for the Olympic attack in Europe. Although Spielberg himself describes the film as ultimately "fictional" and only "inspired" by the actions of the real Caesarea unit, the plot is not without its problems because it mixes facts and fictitious things without a clear demarcation. The data of the Olympic attack are quite realistic and, for example, the people shown Golda Meir (Prime Minister) and Zwi Zamir (Mossad boss) are historical, and the processes shown for the attacks in Paris, Nicosia and Beirut come close to reality. The film also uses Yuval Aviv's pseudonym Avner. On the other hand, the characters of the agents shown in the film are fictitious; in contrast to reality, the unit consists of only five agents who carry out all attacks themselves. The mixture harbors the risk that what is invented is taken for real. The film was also criticized for omitting the execution of the innocent innocent, Ahmed Bouchiki , in the context of the so-called Lillehammer affair .

Documentary

  • The documentary Der Olympia-Mord by ZDF from 2005 reconstructs in detail both the events surrounding the Olympic assassination attempt, including the unsuccessful attempt at liberation by the German security agencies, and the retaliatory actions undertaken by Israel, including the Lillehammer affair.

literature

  • Aaron J. Klein: Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response . Random House, New York 2005, ISBN 1-4000-6427-9 .
  • Michael Bar-Zohar , Eitan Haber: Revenge for Munich. Terrorists in the Mossad's sights. 1st edition. Droste, 2006, ISBN 3-7700-1238-0 .
  • George Jonas: Vengeance. The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team. 1984, ISBN 0-7432-9164-6 (Reprint: edition by Simon & Schuster, 2005)
    • George Jonas: Vengeance is ours. An Israeli secret command in action. Droemer Knaur, 1984, ISBN 3-426-26143-X .
  • Benny Morris: Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-1999 . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1999, ISBN 0-679-42120-3 .
  • Victor Ostrovsky: By Way of Deception-The making and unmaking of a Mossad Officer . St. Martin's Press, New York 1990, ISBN 0-9717595-0-2 .
  • Simon Reeve: One Day in September . Arcade Publishing, New York 2000, ISBN 1-55970-547-7 .
  • Dan Raviv , Yossi Melman : Every Spy a Prince. The Complete History of Israel's Security Community . Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-47102-8 .
    • German by Uta Haas: The history of the Mossad. The rise and fall of the Israeli intelligence service . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05805-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aaron J. Klein: Striking Back. The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response. Random House, New York 2005, ISBN 1-4000-6427-9 . Victor Ostrovsky: By Way of Deception-The making and unmaking of a Mossad Officer. St. Martin's Press, New York 1990, ISBN 0-9717595-0-2 .
  2. ↑ Former Mossad agents testified anonymously that there was no reason to stop the retaliatory measures until the first Oslo Accords were signed.
  3. ^ Analysis: Al-Qaeda takes on Israel? BBC . In fact, the title was introduced by other authors and most likely never used by the Mossad itself
  4. ^ Munich: Operation Bayonet. BBC , Jan 16, 2006; Retrieved August 17, 2006.
  5. ↑ a b c d The Olympic murder . ( Memento from October 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) 90-minute documentary by Sebastian Dehnhardt , Uli Weidenbach and Manfred Oldenburg ; Broadcast on August 15, 2006, 8:15 p.m. on ZDF . The depiction comes from the bereaved who have their say in this ZDF documentary.
  6. ^ Benny Morris: Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-1999 . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1999, ISBN 0-679-42120-3 , p. 381.
  7. ↑ Reeve / Ostrovsky: Reeve claims that intelligence sources speak of 20 final personal targets (Reeve, p. 162), while Ostrovsky gives this number as 35 (Ostrovsky, p. 179).
  8. ↑ Simon Reeve: One Day in September . Arcade Publishing, New York 2000, ISBN 1-55970-547-7 , p. 161.
  9. ^ Reeve, p. 162.
  10. ↑ Klein, p. 133.
  11. ↑ George Jonas: Vengeance. The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team. 1984, ISBN 0-7432-9164-6 This is what Yuval Aviv, who speaks in Jonas' book, claims to have led a team operating in Europe that was not controlled by the government and only communicated with Harari.
  12. ↑ Bell J. Bowyer: Assassin: Theory and Practice of Political Violence . Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick 2005, ISBN 1-4128-0509-0 , p. 138.
  13. ^ Elaine Davenport, Paul Eddy and Peter Gillman additional research by Leni Gillman: The Plumbat Affair. Andre Deutsch, archived from the original on November 30, 2014 ; Retrieved on November 30, 2014 (English, The number given here is based on this very extensive research. Many other reports give Harari only six actors of the so-called hit team, which is probably due to the fact that only six could be arrested Israel refused to reveal the identity of the shooter (s) and the fictional Spielberg film Munich shows the Caesarea unit as a group of just five agents.)
  14. ^ Fatal Error. . In: Time Magazine. August 6, 1973, article published in TIME magazine immediately after the attack, assuming ten people involved.
  15. ^ Wilhelm Dietl : The agent of the Mossad. Operation Red Prince. ECON Verlag, Düsseldorf 1992, ISBN 3-430-12105-1 .
  16. ^ Alexander Wolff: No one has stood trial for the Munich massacre, but Israel's revenge operation brought lethal justice . ( Memento of June 4, 2011 on the Internet Archive ) In: Sports Illustrated , August 26, 2002; Retrieved June 20, 2006.
  17. ^ Reeve, p. 215.
  18. ^ Ian MacKinnon: Spielberg's take on Olympics massacre called into question. December 12, 2005, archived from the original on October 13, 2008 ; Retrieved June 20, 2006 (English).
  19. ^ Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) attacked terrorists target (June 8, 1992, France). In: MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base. Archived from the original on January 27, 2005 ; accessed on November 30, 2014 (English).
  20. ↑ Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network (English)
  21. ↑ a b Ostrovsky, p. 180.
  22. ^ Reeve, p. 167.
  23. ^ Morris, p. 381.
  24. ↑ Klein, p. 116.
  25. ↑ Annæus Schjødt: Mange liv (Many lives). At least this is what the lawyer Annæus Schjødt, who represented two of the agents in the trial and later married his client Sylvia Rafael, claims in his book Mange liv (Many Lives) , published in 2004 . See also chapter margin note in main article Lillehammer affair
  26. ↑ a b David B. Tinnin with Dag Christensen: The Hit Team . Little Brown and Company, 1976.