The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (82 page)

Indeed, one of Meinhof’s daughters, Bettina Röhl, clearly accepts this story as true. Her own anger at what her mother allegedly planned
for her has fueled a vendetta she wages to this day against all those she suspects of having colluded with the guerilla struggle.

However, in 2007, new information was brought to light by historian Jutta Ditfurth. In a sympathetic biography of Meinhof, Ditfurth claims that Homann and Aust’s entire story was nothing but an elaborate lie.
¹

According to Ditfurth, the fate of the Meinhof-Röhl children was still before the family courts at the time of this alleged rescue, and there was a strong chance custody would be granted to Meinhof’s older sister Inge Wienke Zitzlaff, a school principal in Hessen who had two daughters of her own.

Ditfurth claims this plan had been made before Ulrike Meinhof ever went underground in 1970, and that as a backup, were the family court to rule in Röhl’s favor, some thought had been given to sending the twins to East Germany.

As Ditfurth points out, at the time of this alleged plot to send the children to Jordan, it was clear to all concerned that that country was on the brink of civil war. Indeed, within a month of the guerillas’ return to the FRG, war did break out, leading to the slaughter of between 4,000 and 10,000 Palestinians. The Children’s Home—where Homann and Aust claim the girls would have been sent—was one of the targets bombed by the Jordanian air force, leaving no survivors.

Obviously, Ditfurth’s research does more than simply show Ulrike Meinhof in a very different and far more human light. It also provides a far more credible explanation as to why, in early 1972, the RAF would castigate Homann for turning against them: if Meinhof was not in fact planning to abandon her children, then Homann’s intervention amounted to an actual kidnapping, one which wrecked Meinhof’s carefully laid plans for her daughters.

We do not know the truth of this matter. We have always been aghast at this story of the RAF planning to exile two young children to dangerous and unfamiliar surroundings. We have no desire to whitewash such a plan if it did in fact exist. That said, Ditfurth’s recent research makes a lot more sense than the previous Aust-Homann story, and while this does not itself prove its accuracy, it certainly gives us occasion for pause and consideration.

As with so much in this story, readers will have to make up their own minds.

Though many accounts of the Entebbe and Mogadishu skyjackings claim that they were carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led at the time by Dr. George Habash, this is not the case.

Rather, they, as well as the 1975 attack on the OPEC Conference in Vienna, were all organized by Dr. Waddi Haddad and carried out by members of Haddad’s PFLP (External Operations)
²
group. While many observers assume the PFLP (EO) and PFLP were the same organization, this belief is not supported by most serious histories.

Along with Habash, Waddi Haddad had been a founding member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Arab National Movement before it. As the PFLP moved rapidly leftwards in the period following the Six Day War, Haddad came to represent old guard hostility to the Front’s new Marxist-Leninist orientation.
³
At the same time, he was the politburo member charged with establishing the PFLP’s External Operations branch, responsible for armed activities outside of Israel/Palestine.
⁴
Such activities took on great importance in the wake of Israel’s 1967 victory.

Thus, one possible source of confusion is that the PFLP (EO) was originally part of the PFLP and acted with its approval.

The External Operations branch, acting under the authority of the PFLP, carried out the Dawson’s Field skyjackings in 1970, precipitating the civil war in Jordan.
⁵
Given the disaster this ended up inflicting on the Palestinians—thousands of civilians killed, and the expulsion of the guerilla from the country—“external operations” fell into disfavor.

In this moment of retreat and demoralization, many militants urged that skyjackings and attacks on civilians be repudiated: a PFLP “conference of the leftist phenomenon” argued in February 1972 that hijackings in particular represented “a fundamental point of dispute between the Left and Right in the PFLP… not only because they contradicted adherence to Marxist-Leninist theory, but also because they invited much damage to the Palestinian revolution.”
¹

For Haddad, however, operations in Europe and elsewhere, whether against military or civilian targets, remained legitimate and useful weapons in the war against Zionism and imperialism.

According to some accounts, Haddad left or was ejected from the PFLP in 1972, taking the External Operations branch with him.
²
According to others, he remained a PFLP member for a number of years despite being marginalized, keeping the External Operations group active as an unsanctioned, rogue outfit.
³

Authors who claim the PFLP (EO) post-72 was simply a deniable but unofficially sanctioned PFLP section do not appear credible, as they never seem able to provide any proof with which to substantiate their allegation. Rather, they exploit the two groups lack of hostility toward one another, stretching this to imply that they remained one and the same. Examples of these good relations include Haddad’s continued contributions to the PFLP,
⁴
and the fact that Habash spoke at Haddad’s funeral in 1978.

As a splinter group, the PFLP (EO) was deprived of the logistical and practical support it had previously enjoyed from the broader Palestinian national movement. This new situation was compensated for by the support Haddad subsequently received from various anti-American Arab governments—Iraq, Algeria, Libya, and the PDRY
⁵
—and eventually from the KGB, which was secretly supporting his activities by 1975.
⁶

As part of the strategy of attacking targets outside of the Middle East, Haddad soon forged ties with a number of European anti-Zionist organizations, both legal and illegal. The Venezuelan adventurer Carlos who had joined Haddad’s network in 1970, was prominent in this process, and was personally responsible for recruiting several activists from the Frankfurt radical scene, including Wilfried Böse, Brigitte Kuhlmann, and Johannes Weinrich, all founding members of the RZ.
⁷

While both popular and left-wing accounts tend to attribute the Entebbe and Mogadishu skyjackings to the PFLP, the accounts attributing these operations to Haddad and the PFLP (EO) seem far better documented. We are convinced of this by simply cross-referencing various facts, and examining reports of Haddad’s activities in this period.

While there is a frustrating dearth of English-language material examining the relations between the two groups, and the PFLP proper may have chosen not to dispel this confusion at the time, this does not change the fact that by 1972, the “regular” PFLP and Haddad’s PFLP (EO) were two distinct organizations.

In late 1977, Waddi Haddad suddenly became afflicted with what seemed to be an aggressive type of leukemia. Despite the best efforts of doctors in Algeria and the German Democratic Republic, he died on March 28, 1978.

His funeral in Baghdad was attended by leaders from all sections of the Palestinian resistance.

In the thirty years since his death, it has been revealed that the controversial Palestinian guerilla commander was in fact poisoned by Mossad, the Israeli secret service. While the timing coincided with the Mogadishu skyjacking, it would seem that this assassination had been decided upon in the wake of Entebbe.
⁸

As a publication of the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Joint Special Operations University approvingly notes, “Upon his death, the organization he had headed dissolved, and attacks on Israel and Israeli interests declined precipitously.”
⁹

Adenauer, Konrad:
1876-1967; 1945, founding member of CDU; 1949, Federal Chairman of the CDU; 1949-1963, Chancellor; 1951-1955, also Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Akache, Zohair:
1954-1977; member of the PFLP-EO; killed during the Mogadishu action.

Albertz, Heinrich:
1915-1993; clergyman; 1966-1967, Mayor of West Berlin, forced to resign in wake of Benno Ohnesorg killing; as requested by 2JM, accompanied the guerillas released in exchange for Peter Lorenz in 1974.

Albrecht, Susanne:
b. 1951; 1976, joined the RAF; 1980, left the RAF and received asylum in the GDR; 1990, arrested and cooperated with police and prosecutors; 1996, released from prison.

Allnach, Kay-Werner:
Member of the RAF; 1974, arrested.

Andrawes, Souhaila:
b. 1953; 1977, injured and arrested during the Mogadishu action; 1978, sentenced to twenty years in prison in Somalia; 1980, pardoned; 1991, moved to Norway; 1994, arrested; 1995, extradited to Germany and sentenced to twelve years; 1997, transferred to Norway to complete her sentence; 1999, released from prison on health grounds.

Asdonk, Brigitte:
b. 1949; founding member of the RAF; 1970, arrested; 1982, released from prison.

Augustin, Ronald:
b. 1949; Dutch citizen; 1971, joined RAF; 1973, arrested; 1980, released from prison.

Aust, Stefan:
b. 1946; journalist; 1994-2008, Editor-in Chief of
Spiegel
.

Azzola, Axel:
lawyer for RAF prisoners; in 1976, following Meinhof’s murder, he resigned his mandate claiming he feared for his life.

Baader, Andreas:
1943-1977; participated in the 1968 Frankfurt department store arsons; founding member of the RAF; 1972, arrested following May Offensive; 1977, killed in prison during the events of the German Autumn.

Bäcker, Hans-Jürgen:
b. 1939; founding member of the RAF; 1970, suspected of acting as a police informant, broke with the RAF; 1971, arrested, charged with the 1970 liberation of Baader; 1974, acquitted.

Barz, Ingeborg:
b. 1948; founding member of the RAF; 1972, left the RAF, but was never seen again; presumed dead.

Baumann, Michael “Bommi”:
b. 1948; founding member of the 2JM; 1975, broke with guerilla politics in his autobiography
Wie alles Anfing
(
Terror or Love?
in English translation); 1981, arrested in London and extradited to West Germany, sentenced to five years.

Becker, Eberhard:
SPK attorney arrested at RAF safehouse in Hamburg on February 4, 1974.

Becker, Verena:
b. 1953; 2JM member, received a six year sentence in 1974; 1975, released from prison as part of a prisoner exchange for CDU politician Peter Lorenz who had been kidnapped by the 2JM, joined the RAF before 1977; 1977, arrested, broke with the RAF in prison and cooperated with police and prosecutors; 1989, pardoned.

Beer, Henning:
b. 1959; brother of Wolfgang Beer; 1978, joined the RAF; 1980, left the RAF and received asylum in the GDR; 1990, arrested and cooperated with police and prosecutors; 1995, released from prison.

Beer, Wolfgang:
1953-1980; brother of Henning Beer; RAF member; 1974, arrested; 1978, released from prison; 1980, died in a car accident while living underground.

Berberich, Monika:
b. 1942; founding member of the RAF; 1970, arrested; 1976, escaped from prison, recaptured two weeks later; 1998, released from prison.

Böll, Heinrich:
1917-1985; Novelist and
Gruppe 47
member; 1970-1972, President of the PEN Club of the FRG; 1972, won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Bölling, Klaus:
b. 1928; SPD member; 1974-1981, Speaker of the House and head of the Federal Press Service; federal government contact person with Mogadishu hijackers during the German Autumn.

Boock, Peter-Jürgen:
b. 1951; c. 1975, joined RAF; 1980, broke with RAF; 1981, arrested, cooperated with police and prosecutors; 1998, pardoned.

Boock, Waltraud:
RAF member; 1976, arrested in Vienna following a bank robbery, sentenced to fifteen years.

Böse, Wilfried:
1949-1976; founding member of the RZ; 1976, killed during the Entebbe hijacking.

Brändle, Reinhold:
1936-1977; Schleyer’s bodyguard; 1977, killed by the RAF.

Brandt, Willy:
1913-1992; SPD politician; 1964, Federal Chairman of the SPD; 1966-1969, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor; 1969-1974, Chancellor, 1974, Chairman of the Socialist International (Second International).

Braun, Bernhard:
b. 1946; Associated with the SPK and subsequently with both the 2JM and the RAF; 1972, arrested following May Offensive, broke with the guerilla in prison.

Buback, Siegfried:
1920-1977; 1974-1977, Attorney General; 1977, assassinated by the RAF.

Buddenberg, Wolfgang:
b. 1911; Federal Supreme Court Judge; 1972, targeted by a RAF car bomb that injured his wife Gerta.

Carlos (Ilich Ramírez Sánchez):
b. 1949; guerilla mercenary closely tied to the Palestinian movement; 1994, arrested in Sudan and extradited to France; 1997, sentenced to life in prison; 2003, aligned himself with fundamentalist Islam, stating his support for Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks; 2005, adopted the name Salim Muhammad.

Cohn-Bendit, Daniel:
b. 1945; 1968, leader of the French student uprising known as the May Revolution, expelled to West Germany; leading figure in the
sponti
movement in the seventies, and an early backer of the Green Party.

Croissant, Klaus:
1931-2002; lawyer for RAF prisoners; 1977, arrested and sentenced to two and a half years for supporting a terrorist organization; upon his release he would begin working for the
Stasi
, while running (unsuccessfully) on the Alternative List in the 1980s.

Dellwo, Hans-Joachim:
brother of Karl-Heinz Dellwo; arrested 1977 on charges of supporting a criminal organization; cooperated with police and prosecutors; moved to Canada upon his release from prison.