Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 15, 1990 TAG: 9007150128
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: EAST BERLIN LENGTH: Medium
The Venezuelan terrorist Illich Ramirez-Sanchez, better known as Carlos, stayed at the Metrolopol Hotel during his visits to East Berlin, around the corner from the U.S. Embassy, a five-minute walk from the Berlin Wall.
Carlos is believed to have been responsible for the 1975 attack on an OPEC meeting in Vienna in which three oil ministers were killed. He is also wanted for the murder of three French policemen in Paris the same year.
The latest disclosures of East German support for Middle Eastern terrorists follow the arrest last month of eight suspected members of the West German Red Army Faction, who had been given new identities, homes and protection by East Germany's fallen Communist regime as they were being sought in the West.
East Germany's latest admissions are confirming long-suspected links between the East Bloc and international terrorism, and offering Western intelligence experts insight into the nature of the relationship that ran well into the 1980s.
The Hungarian interior minister announced last month that 30 terrorists operating under Carlos had used Budapest as their base of operations from 1970 to 1981. The minister cited a letter from Carlos to Janos Kadar, thanking the former Hungarian leader for allowing his "combatants to circulate freely" in Budapest.
Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel disclosed recently that his country's secret service had supplied the explosives terrorists used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
East Berlin also hosted the Palestinian terrorists Abu Hisham and Abu Daud, who masterminded the 1972 attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in which 17 people died.
"Carlos and the others felt completely safe. They went to restaurants, cafes and nightclubs," said Peter-Michael Diestel, the East German interior minister. He added that Carlos, traveling under a diplomatic passport supplied by the People's Republic of Yemen, frequented the Haus Berlin, a club where the East German security service's top call-girls worked. He was under constant surveillance here, according to the Stasi records.
So far, East Germany has acknowledged only that protection was afforded visiting terrorists as they traveled in this city. But Diestel is dropping news of the country's past misdeeds in weekly tidbits, and few here doubt that a deeper level of East German involvement with terrorist activities will be disclosed in the coming weeks.
Diestel said last week that he expected to have enough evidence to bring charges against East Germany's former leader, Erich Honecker, and his security minister, Erich Mielke, by the end of the month.
"It concerns the support of a criminal organization and assisting murder," Diestel said. "For me, there's absolutely no question that action will be taken."
The West German magazine Stern reported last week that Honecker knew of the April 1986 bombing at La Belle discoteque in West Berlin two weeks before it occurred, and made no attempt to stop it. The magazine also reported that the man who carried out the bombing had been arrested in West Germany on other charges. It did not name the suspect.
The bombing of the discoteque frequented by American soldiers led to the death of two GIs and a Turkish woman. Ten days after the La Belle attack, American planes bombed the Libyan cities of Benghazi and Tripoli, targeting the compound of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
The West German prosecutor's office dismissed the Stern report as "pure speculation," but confirmed that East and West Berlin officials have been poring over the Stasi files on the La Belle bombing since May. Those files are reportedly missing important documents.
American intelligence had from the start presumed the explosives used in the La Belle bombing came over from East Berlin. But last week's reports brought the first suggestion that Honecker himself may have been involved.
"It has been a surprising revelation," said a Western diplomat here, "because the assumption always was that the guys who did the La Belle came over through East Berlin, with the PLO or Libyan help. But that the East Germans themselves were involved - that we didn't know."
by CNB