Special Report West Germany’s Rescue of Hijack Victims Could Mark Turning Point for Arab, Internatio

Monday night’s dramatic rescue by a West German anti-terrorist squad of 86 hostages held by Arab and German terrorists at Mogadishu Airport in Somalia, and the suicide of Germany’s three top terrorists could mark a turning point in the fortunes of Arab and international terror groups, according to diplomatic observers. German and Arab terrorists have a short but bloody record of cooperation.

Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin, the leaders of the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang who committed suicide, all under-went terror training in a Palestinian comp in 1970, say German security experts. This first encounter ended in a fiasco, with the Palestinians accusing the group of being “big talkers and cowards.”

But the gang regained its prestige among Palestinians in 1972 after a series of bomb attacks in Germany. Cooperation resumed in 1975. In March of that year, five jailed German terrorists released in exchange for the kidnapped Berlin politician Peter Lorenz found refuge in Aden.

TRACK OF TERRORIST GANG

There they entered a hijack and terror training camp operated by George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) where another prominent German terrorist, Siegfried Haag, was second in command. At the same time, Dutch and Japanese groups were similarly being drilled. Two of the German trainees, Gabriele Kroecher-Tiedemann and Hans-Joachim Klein, took part in the December, 1975 attack on the Vienna OPEC meeting, masterminded by Palestinian terrorist leader Wadia Hadad and led by the internationally-sought terrorist, Carlos.

Another German “hired” by Carlos, Wilfried Boese, led the June, 1975 hijack of the Air France plane to Uganda, and six German terrorists were on the list of 40 prisoners whose release the hijackers demanded.

Also in 1976, a German terrorist, Bernd Hausmann, transported a suitcase with explosives to Ben Gurion Airport-reportedly on instructions from Habash-where it blew up killing him and an Israeli security official. Two Germans, Brigitte Schulz and Thomas Reuter, have been under arrest in Israel since 1976 on suspicion of having collaborated with Palestinians in planning an attack on an EI AI plane in Nairobi.

Earlier this year it was learned that German terrorists planned to kill two German-Jewish leaders and the Germans aim, commented the weekly magazine “Spiegel” recently, was to make a “down-payment” to the Palestinians, such as at Entebbe, in order to obtain “a moral commitment from the latter to secure the release not only of their own activists but also of Baader-Meinhof supporters from German jails.”

This explanation ties in with the latest hijacking where an Arab-German gang demanded the release of 11 top German terrorists from German jails and two Palestinian terrorists from Turkish prisons. The hijack, it should be remembered, was timed to coincide with the kidnapping of German industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, in exchange for the same 11 German terrorists.

ANOTHER MAJOR SETBACK

Another major setback for the Arab-German terror axis is the change of attitude by Arab, African and Eastern bloc countries which previously openly supported them.

Various “radical countries” named by Schleyer’s kidnappers as possible refuge for the 11 jailed terrorists, if they were released, reportedly refused to accept them, although one country, Algeria, subsequently accepted five Japanese hijackers of a Japan Airlines plane this month. Even the Soviet Union and East Germany, two staunch supporters of Palestinian terrorists, offered their services to Bonn.

But nowhere is this changed climate clearer than in the surprise cooperation between Somalia and West Germany in carrying out the rescue raid. Somalia was previously regarded as friendly to the Palestinian underground, especially the radical PFLP, and Hadad’s even more radical group which split from the PFLP.

Ironically, it was from the Somalian capital Mogadishu, where this week’s German raid took place, that Hadad directed the Air France hijack to Uganda which led to the Entebbe rescue, according to German and Israeli security sources.

Somalia’s search for Western aid in its current war with Ethiopia, and disappointment at support of Ethiopia by its former patron, the USSR, was behind the drastic turnabout, observers speculate.

LESSON OF GERMANY’S RESCUE

If Israel must be credited for its precedent-setting Entebbe rescue (many Germans called the Israeli Embassy here to express appreciation of Israel’s influence), Bonn can claim much credit for taking a lead among Western industrialized countries in following the Israeli example.

In recent months, Bonn Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher has worked tirelessly for a common anti-terrorist line: at the UN, where Germany is pressing for a pact punishing hostage-taking, in Europe where it was instrumental in last January’s 17-nation treaty for cooperation in combatting terrorism and in countless talks with developing countries.

While Bonn does and can offer economic aid to developing countries who back its call for international order, this should not detract from the significance of its contribution. One Israeli source here said: “We owe all respect to the Germans for taking the initiative among the major powers-firstly through negotiations internationally, and now in the field.” Because of Bonn’s economic and political importance, he added, “I believe other Western countries will learn the lesson.”