Chaos
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2003
- Messages
- 10,611
This is sort of a companion thread to the "German Autumn" thread in Politics.
As many of you probably know, in the autumn of ´77, the German terrorist group Rote Armee Fraktion kidnapped the chairman of the employers´ association, Hanns Martin Schleyer, and a team of PLFP terrorists hijacked an airliner full of tourists. Both operations had the goals of freeing imprisoned RAF terrorists, particularly their leaders Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe, Gudrun Ensslin and Irmgard Möller, at that time located in a maximum security facility in Stuttgart.
Shortly after German special forces re-captured the hijacked airliner (killing three of the four hijackers; the plane´s pilot had been murdered earlier) in Somalia - in the same night that this happened - the imprisoned terrorist leaders committed suicide, or attempted it; Baader and Ensslin were found dead in the morning, Raspe died later that day in hospital, and Möller survived. As the news of this reached Schleyer´s kidnappers, they murdered him, as well.
Now, due to a combination of factors, ever since the (apparent?) suicide of the RAF leadership, there have been conspiracy theories about this. Irmgard Möller claimed that, in the middle of the night, masked men entered the cell block where she and her comrades were held, murdered the others, and left her for dead. This has been the official position of all RAF members ever since.
Some other factors to consider in this:
- I don´t know about you guys, but if *I* was part of a secret team that was to murder these terrorists and make it look like suicide, I would damn well sure they are ALL dead, and not leave one alive to talk about it. And if I was to assemble such a team, I would pick people who are competent enough to know the difference between "dead" and "alive".
- After the suicides (or "suicides"), Brigitte Mohnhaupt, leader of what remained of the RAF, reportedly told the others (paraphrasing) to not "be so stupid as to believe our leaders were victims; they decided to do this; this was the only option still open to them".
- At some point earlier that year, the cell block had been thoroughly bugged and federal police had eavesdropped on the conversation of the RAF prisoners, including those with their defenders, the latter of which especially is a BIG no-no in German penal law. There are no records stating that the bugs were removed afterwards, and, in the words of one official, "it would have been dumb not to use anything we had in order to help free Schleyer" - since it was fairly clear that the prisoners were able to communicate with the outside world somehow, this would have included eavesdropping on their conversations, IF the capability for that was there.
- It was known to police that the prisoners´ defenders smuggled objects into and out of prison, but apparently for legal reasons it was not possible to completely put a stop to that. There is, however, no evidence that police specifically knew that the prisoners had, among other things, two handguns, with which Baader and Raspe later killed themselves.
- The prisoners had rigged the radio receiver system of their cell block in a way that allowed them to communicate with each other; it seems quite likely that police knew about this. However, no attempt was made to put a stop to this - perhaps to avoid having the prisoners come up with something else, something police did not notice.
- There have been many inconsistencies in reports after the incident, of the type of "who knew what, when?", which may or may not indicate a cover-up by police and government - you know, the kind of inconsistencies that get CT folks salivating like Pavlovian dogs.
This is all pertinent information I can come up with right now.
So, there are basically four possibilities:
1. The imprisoned terrorists were indeed murdered by police or similar forces.
2. Police knew that the prisoners were committing suicide, but let it happen to be rid of them.
3. Police failed to prevent the suicides through massive incompetence.
4. Police did what it (reasonably) could, but failed to prevent the suicides nonetheless.
Personally, I think the available evidence, as well as basic common sense, toss (1) straight out of the window. (4) is very unlikely - if nothing else, I have yet to see ONE aspect of government (in the widest possible sense) where incompetence does not play a significant role. I am torn between possibilities (2) and (3), with perhaps a slight bias towards (2).
Any thoughts on this matter, or many questions?
As many of you probably know, in the autumn of ´77, the German terrorist group Rote Armee Fraktion kidnapped the chairman of the employers´ association, Hanns Martin Schleyer, and a team of PLFP terrorists hijacked an airliner full of tourists. Both operations had the goals of freeing imprisoned RAF terrorists, particularly their leaders Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe, Gudrun Ensslin and Irmgard Möller, at that time located in a maximum security facility in Stuttgart.
Shortly after German special forces re-captured the hijacked airliner (killing three of the four hijackers; the plane´s pilot had been murdered earlier) in Somalia - in the same night that this happened - the imprisoned terrorist leaders committed suicide, or attempted it; Baader and Ensslin were found dead in the morning, Raspe died later that day in hospital, and Möller survived. As the news of this reached Schleyer´s kidnappers, they murdered him, as well.
Now, due to a combination of factors, ever since the (apparent?) suicide of the RAF leadership, there have been conspiracy theories about this. Irmgard Möller claimed that, in the middle of the night, masked men entered the cell block where she and her comrades were held, murdered the others, and left her for dead. This has been the official position of all RAF members ever since.
Some other factors to consider in this:
- I don´t know about you guys, but if *I* was part of a secret team that was to murder these terrorists and make it look like suicide, I would damn well sure they are ALL dead, and not leave one alive to talk about it. And if I was to assemble such a team, I would pick people who are competent enough to know the difference between "dead" and "alive".
- After the suicides (or "suicides"), Brigitte Mohnhaupt, leader of what remained of the RAF, reportedly told the others (paraphrasing) to not "be so stupid as to believe our leaders were victims; they decided to do this; this was the only option still open to them".
- At some point earlier that year, the cell block had been thoroughly bugged and federal police had eavesdropped on the conversation of the RAF prisoners, including those with their defenders, the latter of which especially is a BIG no-no in German penal law. There are no records stating that the bugs were removed afterwards, and, in the words of one official, "it would have been dumb not to use anything we had in order to help free Schleyer" - since it was fairly clear that the prisoners were able to communicate with the outside world somehow, this would have included eavesdropping on their conversations, IF the capability for that was there.
- It was known to police that the prisoners´ defenders smuggled objects into and out of prison, but apparently for legal reasons it was not possible to completely put a stop to that. There is, however, no evidence that police specifically knew that the prisoners had, among other things, two handguns, with which Baader and Raspe later killed themselves.
- The prisoners had rigged the radio receiver system of their cell block in a way that allowed them to communicate with each other; it seems quite likely that police knew about this. However, no attempt was made to put a stop to this - perhaps to avoid having the prisoners come up with something else, something police did not notice.
- There have been many inconsistencies in reports after the incident, of the type of "who knew what, when?", which may or may not indicate a cover-up by police and government - you know, the kind of inconsistencies that get CT folks salivating like Pavlovian dogs.
This is all pertinent information I can come up with right now.
So, there are basically four possibilities:
1. The imprisoned terrorists were indeed murdered by police or similar forces.
2. Police knew that the prisoners were committing suicide, but let it happen to be rid of them.
3. Police failed to prevent the suicides through massive incompetence.
4. Police did what it (reasonably) could, but failed to prevent the suicides nonetheless.
Personally, I think the available evidence, as well as basic common sense, toss (1) straight out of the window. (4) is very unlikely - if nothing else, I have yet to see ONE aspect of government (in the widest possible sense) where incompetence does not play a significant role. I am torn between possibilities (2) and (3), with perhaps a slight bias towards (2).
Any thoughts on this matter, or many questions?
