(Berlin) One of the Palestinians, a member of the commando responsible for the hostage-taking at the Munich Olympics in 1972 which cost the lives of 11 Israeli athletes, lived several years later in Berlin, the German daily said on Saturday Suddeutsche Zeitung.
Posted at 11:33 a.m.
The newspaper writes that it exceptionally had access, thanks to a special authorization, to a police report in the archives of Munich (south), which supports this information.
According to this report, the Bavarian police, leader of the investigation into the Munich attacks, would have heard through an informant from the Federal Criminal Police (BKA) of the presence of this Palestinian in Berlin.
At the time, writes the newspaper, he was living under a false identity in the western part of the city cut in two and went almost daily to the east, to the GDR, to the liaison office of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (PLO), where he worked.
The Bavarian Interior Ministry, contacted by AFP, could not be reached immediately on Saturday to comment on this information.
After the hostage-taking on September 5, 1972 at the Munich Olympics, a shooting took place, during which 11 Israeli athletes, a German policeman and five of the eight commando members were killed.
A month later, the three survivors of the commando, captured, had been released in exchange for other hostages after the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane.
A theory, conveyed above all by the parents of the Israeli victims, has been circulating for a long time: the government of the FRG would have, to prevent any new attack in Germany, facilitated the release of the three captured members of the commando.
This theory is recalled by the Munich historian Dominik Aufleger, quoted by the Suddeutsche Zeitung.
Mr Aufleger, who also had access to the same files as the Suddeutsche Zeitung in the context of his research on the Munich bombing, questions the will of the police to arrest this survivor of the commando who apparently lived in Berlin.
“We can ask ourselves if the police really wanted to act or if they gave up on an arrest to avoid any new attack on Palestinian militants in the FRG”, is it quoted in the newspaper.
At the beginning of September, fifty years after the attack on the Munich Olympics, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier asked “forgiveness” from the relatives of the Israeli victims of the 1972 Olympics, taking responsibility for the “failures” that had accompanied the tragedy.
The German government has agreed to release an envelope of 28 million euros (37 million CAN dollars), partly paid by Bavaria and the city of Munich, to the families of the Israeli victims.