Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999 - Germany

German officials saw no signs of renewed leftwing terrorism in 1999. The Red Army Faction (RAF) officially disbanded in March 1998, and authorities uncovered no renewed RAF activity. Several former RAF members still were wanted by German authorities, who assessed that the terrorists were willing to use violence to avoid capture. In mid-September, Austrian police in Vienna killed suspected German RAF terrorist Horst Ludwig-Mayer and arrested his accomplice Andrea Klump. Klump was extradited to Germany for membership in the outlawed RAF, possible complicity in an attack on the Deutsche Bank chairman, and involvement in an attack against a NATO installation in Spain in 1988.

Officials have no evidence of organized, politically motivated rightwing terrorist activity in Germany, but rightwing "skinheads" continued to attack foreigners in 1999. The government stepped up efforts to combat xenophobic violence, including trying some skinheads at the federal level and initiating a program called the "German Forum to Prevent Criminality" to deal with the social causes of violence. Some German states also set up antiterrorist police units that successfully reduced attacks by skinheads.

German police took an active stance against terrorism in 1999. On 19 October a special German commando unit apprehended the hijacker of an Egypt Air flight after the plane landed in Hamburg. The perpetrator, who requested political asylum in Germany, was slated to be tried in German courts. Officials had no reason to believe the hijacker was linked to any terrorist organizations.

Germany showed far less resolve when it refused to seek extradition of PKK terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan following his detention in Italy in November 1998 on a German INTERPOL warrant. The German Government refused to act because it feared that a trial in Germany would cause widespread street violence, posing an unacceptable threat to Germany's domestic security. This and other factors eventually led the Italians to release Ocalan, whose subsequent flight to Russia and Greece culminated in his capture in Kenya in February. News of Ocalan's capture produced violent Kurdish protests throughout Germany, including demonstrations against US diplomatic facilities and the storming of Greek, Kenyan, and Israeli diplomatic missions. In Berlin, Israeli security personnel shot to death four protesters who had stormed the Israeli Consulate General.

On the judicial front, the trial of five suspects charged in the bombing in 1986 against Labelle Discotheque in Berlin, which killed two US servicemen and one Turkish citizen, progressed slowly in 1999. The trial may take several more years to reach a conclusion.

On 1 September a German court convicted two members of the leftwing terrorist group "Anti-Imperialist Cell" and sentenced them to lengthy jail terms for their ties to a series of bombings in 1995 against several German politicians' residences.