Patterns of Global Terrorism 1996 - Germany

German prosecutors put their star witness, exiled former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani Sadr, on the stand in the trial of five men – four Lebanese and an Iranian – accused of murdering four Iranian dissidents in a gangland-style shooting at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin in 1992. Bani Sadr told the court in August that Iran's religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered the killings of the three exiled Iranian Kurdish leaders and their translator and that President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani signed the order. He also referred to a suspected former Iranian intelligence officer (so-called Witness C and later identified as Abolqasem Messbahi), who also was called to testify. Statements in the prosecution's summation in November, which implicated Iran's senior leadership for directing the Mykonos killings, led to demonstrations in front of the German Embassy in Tehran and threats against the prosecutors. In March prosecutors issued an arrest warrant against Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahiyan in connection with the killings. A Berlin state court has spent almost three years hearing evidence in the Mykonos case. (Guilty verdicts for four of the accused were announced in April 1997.)

Suspected Palestinian terrorist Yasser Shraydi was extradited from Lebanon to Germany in May to stand trial in connection with the La Belle discotheque bombing in Berlin in 1986. In October three other suspects in the case were arrested and are in German custody. Arrest warrants also were issued against four former Libyan diplomats and intelligence officers believed to have been involved in the bombing. German prosecutors, who have stated that this bombing was a case of state terrorism directed from Tripoli, hope to begin the trial in mid-1997.

The number of terrorist acts instigated by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) decreased significantly in 1996. Security Services Chief Klaus Gruenewald had visited PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in August 1995 to demand the cessation of PKK violence on German soil. PKK-attributable violence in Germany continued at a negligible level until early March when, on the occasion of Kurdish New Year's Day, PKK-affiliated demonstrations in Dortmund and other cities turned violent and injured several German policemen. Ocalan blamed the incidents on the German police but, in view of negative German public reaction, later apologized and promised to halt further PKK incidents in Germany. Earlier in the year, Ocalan had threatened to use PKK suicide bombers in Germany and also issued death threats against Chancellor Kohl and Foreign Minister Kinkel, but he later retracted these statements. This reflects his dual strategy of threatening to carry out violence in Germany, on the one hand, and trying to operate within the parameters of German law, on the other.

The Red Army Faction (RAF) has not been active in Germany for the past several years, although German authorities continue to pursue and prosecute RAF members for crimes committed during the 1980s. Following two years of hearings, the German courts convicted RAF member Birgit Hogefeld in November of three counts of murder – including the 1985 murder of a US soldier and the subsequent bombing attack at the US Rhein-Main Airbase – and four counts of attempted murder. She was sentenced to life in prison. Christoph Seidler – who was alleged to be, but claims never to have been, a member of the RAF – the main suspect in the 1989 car-bomb killing of Deutsche Bank chief executive Alfred Herrhausen, turned himself in to German authorities in November but was later released and a longstanding arrest warrant lifted.

German authorities scored a coup with the arrest of two suspected members of the shadowy leftist Anti-Imperialist Cell (AIZ) in February. The two men – Bernhard Falk and Michael Steinau – are awaiting trial. The AIZ had claimed responsibility for a series of bomb attacks on the homes of second-tier conservative politicians in 1995, the last occurring in December 1995. Because no further incidents have occurred since the February arrests, the German Government believes the AIZ is no longer a viable threat.