BERLIN – For years, Germany’s government had contact with the organizers of the
Black September terror group that was responsible for the murder of 11 Israeli
sportsmen and a German police office at the 1972 Olympic Games, German newspaper
Der Spiegel reported Sunday.
Several months after the murders, the West
German government proposed a secret meeting between one of the organizers of the
Palestinian terrorist group and then-foreign minister Walter Scheel. The aim of
the clandestine meeting was to create a “new basis of trust,” according to Der
Spiegel.
Germany’s government demanded a quid pro quo.
The PLO
would cease attacks on German soil in exchange for a political upgrade. In
addition to granting political legitimacy to the PLO, the government would pull
the plug on any criminal charges for the murders in Munich.
Paul Frank,
the state secretary in the Foreign Ministry, sent a signal to the PLO that the
“Munich chapter” is now “closed,” Der Spiegel wrote.
The newsweekly
reported that when the French police arrested Abu Daoud (real name Muhammad
Daoud Oude) – one of the main organizers of the killing spree in Munich – and
inquired about extraditing him to the German authorities, Bavarian justice
secretary Alfred Seidl recommended that Germany take no action. The French
released Abu Daoud. Syria’s Assad regime protected Abu Daoud and the Fatah
terrorist in a Damascus hospital in 2010.
Germany today maintains a quid
pro quo policy toward the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah that is similar to
its posture toward Black September, according to German journalists and
intelligence officers. The Federal Republic allows Hezbollah’s 950 active
members to work legally in Germany in exchange for not engaging in terrorism on
German soil.
Philipp Missfelder, Bundestag foreign policy spokesman for
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, wrote The Jerusalem Post last week, “It is
long overdue to place Hezbollah on the EU’s list of terror
organizations.”
The Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee issued
a statement last week calling on Merkel’s administration to ban Hezbollah.