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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
Germany: Global Terrorism
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Patterns Of Global Terrorism: 1991
Western European Overview: Germany
</hdr>
<body>
<p> Germany experienced few incidents of international terrorism
in 1991, and its prosecution of numerous international
terrorist suspects continued. Rapid political evolution in
Eastern and Central Europe, as well as the continued
assimilation of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR),
contributed to a significant increase in rightwing extremism and
violence, especially against immigrants. German leftwing radical
elements pursued their traditional anticapitalist and
anti-imperialist agenda.
</p>
<p> In its first lethal attack in more than a year, the radical
leftist Red Army Faction (RAF) killed Detiev Rohwedder in his
Dusseldorf home in April 1991. Rohwedder was the head of the
government agency responsible for privatizing or closing
thousands of state-owned companies in the former GDR and
symbolized for the RAF the spread of capitalism to the former
Communist states. In June, a Berlin housing official was killed
by a letter bomb, possibly by pro-RAF militants protesting the
elimination of cheap public housing in the united city.
</p>
<p> To protest the Persian Gulf war, the RAF strafed the
American Embassy in Bonn with approximately 250 rounds of
automatic rifle fire in February. Only minor property damage
resulted. Militants associated with the RAF and other leftwing
radical groups, such as the Revolutionary Cells, mounted 10
other attacks during the war, such as firebombings against
stores in Frankfurt and IBM and Coca-Cola targets in Freiburg.
In March, a NATO pipeline was blown up by the Revolutionary
Cells in yet another protest against the war.
</p>
<p> None of the current generation of the RAF commando echelon
has been captured. German authorities, however, did prosecute
several RAF commandos, all but one of whom were arrested in 1990
after hiding for nearly 10 years in the GDR. In 1991, five were
sentenced to prison terms and three were charged for terrorist
crimes committed between 1977 and 1981. A renewed campaign by
RAF prisoners to press authorities to colocate themselves
generated relatively little outside support, possibly indicating
weaker coordination and commitment among RAF prisoners,
militants, and supporters.
</p>
<p> Evidence linking the former East German secret police, or
Stasi, to currently active members of the Red Army Faction did
not emerge in 1991. Arrest warrants were issued in March for
several former Stasi officers familiar with previous RAF
activities.
</p>
<p> There were no attacks by the Provisional Irish Republican
Army (PIRA) against British military targets in Germany in
1991. Several PIRA suspects were, however, extradited to Germany
from the Netherlands in July and October to stand trial for
anti-British attacks carried out there in the late 1980s. Two
other suspected PIRA operatives were acquitted in Dusseldorf of
an attempted bombing in 1988 of British army barracks in
Duisburg; however, they will be tried on other charges.
</p>
<p> Trials continued in 1991 for nearly 20 alleged members of the
Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) on charges ranging from membership
in a terrorist organization to murder. Turkish, including
Kurdish, radicals remained active in Germany in support of
terrorist organizations operating in Turkey. Several were
arrested when demonstrations against Turkish diplomatic or
consular posts in Germany turned violent. Turkish airlines and
bank offices in Germany were frequent targets of firebombings
and violent protests as well. Ten German tourists were abducted
by the PKK in Turkey for a week in August.
</p>
<p> Two German relief workers were the final remaining Western
hostages held in Lebanon at the end of 1991. For their release,
the abductors demanded clemency for two Hizballah members
jailed in Germany: Mohamed Ali Hamadi, the hijacker of a TWA
flight in 1985 who is serving a life sentence for murder, and
his brother Abbas Hamadi who was sentenced to 13 years by a
German court for related crimes. The German Government has
refused to make such concessions to the hostage takers.
</p>
<p> Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General
Command (PFLP-GC) members Hafiz Dalkamoni and Abdel Fattah
Ghadanfar were sentenced in June to 15 and 12 years,
respectively, by a German court for attempted murder in failed
attacks against US military duty trains in 1987 and 1988.
Dalkamoni's trial for manslaughter in the death of a German
bomb-disposal technician also began in 1991. The bomb technician
was killed while examining a bomb prepared for use by the
PFLP-GC in its planned campaign in the fall of 1988 against
civil aviation. That campaign was thwarted by arrests made by
German authorities in October 1988. Charges against Daher Faour,
a suspect in the 1986 bombing of the La Belle disco in Berlin,
were dropped for lack of evidence.
</p>
<p> Germany expelled nearly 30 Iraqi diplomats, including all
those assigned to the Berlin office, as part of a European
campaign to deny Iraq the opportunity to foment terrorist
attacks against Western targets during the Persian Gulf war.
</p>
<p>Source: United States Department of State, April 1992.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>