Lufthansa Flight 615

The Olympic hostage crisis On 5 September 1972, during the Munich Summer Olympics, eight members of the Palestinian group Black September took nine members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, after killing two other Israeli athletes. During a shoot-out following a failed police rescue attempt at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base, all hostages were killed. Five of the eight Palestinian militants were also killed. The three surviving perpetrators were Adnan Al-Gashey, Jamal Al-Gashey, and Mohammed Safady, who were arrested and held in pre-trial custody. In Israel, the ensuing German appeasement politics Indeed, since Willy Brandt had become chancellor in 1969, there had been a change of the West German attitude towards the Arab–Israeli conflict. The earlier conservative governments had been considered pointedly pro-Israel (especially during the mid-1960s with the Six-Day War), which had resulted in a number of Arab states breaking off diplomatic relations with West Germany. On 9 September, an anonymous letter was received claiming that such a hijacking was indeed imminent, which prompted the Federal Ministry of the Interior (then led by Hans-Dietrich Genscher) to consider whether citizens of Arab states should be denied boarding of Lufthansa flights. Already during the Munich hostage crisis, it had become evident that the attackers were aware of possible liberation attempts in case of their arrest. Asked if he was afraid of being caught and put into a German prison, their leader Luttif Afif (who was later killed in the Fürstenfeldbruck shootout) had responded that there was nothing to fear, because "there is no death penalty in Germany, and our brothers would liberate us." ==The hijacking==

:Note: For consistency reasons, all times have been converted to Central European Time. On Sunday, 29 October 1972, a Lufthansa Boeing 727-100 was hijacked: Flight 615 on the Damascus-Beirut-Ankara-Munich-Frankfurt route. The aircraft had originated at Damascus International Airport in the early morning, with seven crew members but initially without any passengers. At the first stopover at Beirut International Airport, 13 people boarded the flight: nine citizens of unknown Arab countries, two Americans, one German, one Frenchman; Departure from Beirut was delayed by over 15 minutes. Originally scheduled to depart at 05:45, The plan was changed, and the Lufthansa crew had to divert instead to Zagreb in what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, circling over Zagreb Airport until the Black September members had been brought there. and flew to Munich. He was then joined by mayor Georg Kronawitter and police chief , as well as the Bavarian interior minister at the local crisis committee. The airplane left Munich, but the pilot had been ordered to stay inside West German airspace. This happened without any reciprocal measures: The 18 hostages were not yet released. In a large scale covert operation dubbed Wrath of God, Israel would subsequently aim at them being tracked down and killed. ==Reactions==

German politicians of the then government parties (Social Democrats and Liberals) as well as the opposition (the conservative Union parties) generally praised the non-violent outcome of the hijacking. This reflected the public opinion that the release of the Munich attackers would reduce the risk of further attacks against German targets. Criticism evolved around the lack of sufficient airport security to prevent explosives being smuggled into passenger airliners, and Lufthansa not employing sky marshals, which at that time were already common on certain flights by El Al, Pan Am, Swissair, and others. Israel sharply condemned the release of the Munich perpetrators and accused West Germany of having "capitulated to terrorism". Prime Minister Golda Meir stated on the following day: "We have been depressed since yesterday, aggrieved and I would say insulted, that the human spirit, so weak and helpless, has surrendered to brutal force." Foreign Minister Abba Eban filed an official protest note with the West German government, and the Israeli ambassador in Bonn was temporarily called back, officially due to consultations. ==Allegations of West German government involvement==

In the immediate aftermath of the hijacking of Flight 615, concerns were voiced that the event might have been staged or at least tolerated by the West German government in order to "get rid of three murderers, which had become a security burden" (as Amnon Rubinstein wrote in Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline "Bonn's Disgrace" shortly after the prisoner release). which corresponds to remarks by Jamal Al-Gashey about the aftermath of his liberation. The film features an interview with Ulrich Wegener, a German counter-terrorism expert and founding commander of GSG 9, who calls such allegations "probably true". Wegener is also quoted with the opinion that considerations of the West German authorities on how to deal with the hostage situation had likely been mainly driven by the desire to prevent the country from becoming the focus for further acts of terror. In 2013, investigative journalists of German television programme '''' cited a letter by the Munich police chief, which had been sent to the Bavarian interior ministry eleven days prior to the hijacking of Flight 615. It describes measures that had been taken in order to "accelerate the deportation" of the Munich attackers, rather than preparing for them to be put on trial. A counter-argument to accusations of a pre-arranged prisoner release includes highlighting the lack of planning and communications that the German negotiators had during the hostage crisis. The situation had been chaotic and confusing at times, making it unlikely that negotiations were scripted. '''', a 1975 documentary feature produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk, attributes the non-violent outcome of the hijacking to Lufthansa chairman Culmann and consul Laqueur: They had acted on their own terms rather than obeying orders by governmental officials. ==See also==