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Was the hijacking of Lufthansa flight LH-615 a set-up?

The routine lasted less than a quarter of an hour, then a 15-hour odyssey began.

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Was the hijacking of Lufthansa flight LH-615 a set-up?

The routine lasted less than a quarter of an hour, then a 15-hour odyssey began. At 6:01 a.m. local time on October 29, 1972, the Lufthansa Boeing 727 “Kiel” took off from Beirut for flight LH-615 and had just reached the cruising altitude of 9,000 meters on the way to the next stopover in Ankara. Suddenly two young men rushed to the cockpit.

"It was ten miles north of Cyprus when I heard a noise behind me, turned around and looked directly into a pistol muzzle," said flight captain Walter Claussen, what happened then: "An Arab was standing behind me, who immediately put the flight engineer in the cabin urged, locked the cockpit door and declared, 'I'm the new captain.'”

The man, obviously an Arab, pulled a hand grenade out of his jacket and calmly explained that he and his comrade still had some explosive devices with them. His first demand was: Claussen should head for the nearest airfield and fill up the aircraft there. The captain landed in Nicosia (Cyprus). “Everything went smoothly there. The terrorists ordered me to fly towards Germany.”

Claussen had to steer the machine alone, because both co-pilot Gerd Maier and flight engineer Jürgen Schröder, like the flight attendants Petra Kuß, Konstanze Marx, Maja Meincke and Jakobus Abrahams, were held in the rear of the machine by the other terrorist. The eleven real passengers were also there, including the Spanish journalist Salvador Salazar Camón, an editor for the Efe news agency. At 8:42 a.m., the 727 took off from Nicosia and flew north-west, heading exactly for Munich.

The perpetrators threatened by radio to blow up the Boeing if the three surviving terrorists in Bavarian prisons who attacked the Israeli Olympic team in Munich on September 5, 1972 and killed eleven athletes were not immediately released and flown out .

Repeated threats had been received in Munich and Bonn since September 9, announcing precisely such blackmail. Nevertheless, the federal government and the Bavarian cabinet were again unprepared for such a case. Two crisis teams were set up in a hurry, but they proved completely helpless in the face of the challenge.

At around 12.15 p.m. the “Kiel” circled Munich-Riem. The kidnappers demanded that the three prisoners be taken directly to their plane after landing so that they could fly to an unknown location with Geisel. The Munich police, however, announced that the "Kiel" had to roll away from the runway to a parking space. At 12:42 p.m., the terrorists then announced: "We're flying back to Zagreb and refueling again."

Three minutes later, at exactly 12:45 p.m., a message from the German ambassador in Tel Aviv Jesco von Puttkamer arrived at the Foreign Office in Bonn. The Israeli government expects, it said, "not to give in to the pressures of the kidnappers." Because "after Munich, the Israeli government would not understand if the three prisoners were released".

Nevertheless, the Bavarian authorities, with the consent of the federal government, prepared the exchange: the three terrorists were taken from their cells to Munich-Riem. There they boarded a Condor business jet with Lufthansa boss Herbert Culmann and took off at 3:47 p.m. The pilots had been instructed not to leave the airspace of the Federal Republic before an agreement had been reached with the hijackers.

However, because the terrorists on the hijacked 727 threatened to blow up the plane, Culmann ignored this directive: He ordered the pilots, of whom he was chief, to fly southeast and land in Zagreb; at 4.52 p.m. the plane touched down there. The “Kiel” also landed seven minutes later. The hijacked Lufthansa Boeing took on the freed Palestinians, the hostages had to stay on board. However, the "Kiel" was initially unable to take off because its tanks were completely empty - after a forced go-around, Claussen had landed with the last drops of kerosene.

Under pressure from Bonn, Zagreb Airport refused to refuel the plane. The terrorists then repeated their threat to blow up the 727. As a result, Kurt Laqueur, Consul General of the Federal Republic in Zagreb, decided to act contrary to the attitude of the Bonn crisis management team and to release kerosene for the plane (and to pay for it with funds from the Federal Foreign Office).

At 6.50 p.m. Claussen, meanwhile totally exhausted and actually unfit to fly, took off the 727 and steered it safely towards Rome. After 65 minutes, the "Kiel" passed the Italian capital and headed south towards Tripoli. He landed in the Libyan capital at 9:05 p.m. After almost exactly 15 hours, the two kidnappers and their three freed cronies released the 18 hostages on board; they flew back to Frankfurt the following day.

Israel had already reacted with outrage at the yielding during the kidnapping. Ambassador von Puttkamer summed up the atmosphere in Tel Aviv as an "incomprehensible German capitulation" that was "encouragement to new crimes" and "unforgivable from the Jewish and Israeli point of view".

The following day he was officially summoned to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and rebuked. "The Israeli government does not understand the attitude of the German government and is asking for clarification on an obvious change of heart," he reported to Bonn in the style of a telegram. "The capitulation to the terrorists on Monday night was incompatible with the previous German attitude."

Just two days later, speculation arose in Israeli newspapers that it was not a question of a “real” hijacking, but of a previously agreed action. Bonn wanted to get rid of the three surviving perpetrators of the Munich attack. At that time, the small number of passengers on board the "Kiel" and the rush of the exchange were cited as indications; In addition, since then there have been some strangely worded instructions from the Munich police and the Bavarian state government, which hinted at a possible exchange even before October 29, 1972.

Jesco von Puttkamer reported from Tel Aviv on November 1, 1972: “The assertion that the federal government is actually happy to be rid of the terrorists, and the even further assertion that there was a set-up game either on the part of Lufthansa or official German authorities with the terrorists is becoming more widespread.” This has not changed over the decades.

However, the log of the radio traffic between the hijacked plane and the Condor jet with Culmann on board, the telegrams in the files of the Federal Foreign Office and the statements of the flight captain Claussen at a press conference on October 30 document without a doubt: chaos had broken out on the German side . At the time, there was no sign of any planning, no guiding hand, and this is not reflected in the official files that have since been comprehensively released.

Rather, the decisive steps towards the exchange were taken by the Lufthansa boss and the consul general on site, contrary to clear instructions from Bonn. Criminal investigation proceedings were even opened against Culmann for this reason, but he defended himself, from his point of view there was a "superior legal emergency" that justified his action; the public prosecutor's office followed him. Laqueur had to face an internal disciplinary procedure and was then deported to the Swiss capital of Bern as deputy ambassador – anything but a promotion.

Since there was never any other concrete indication of a fake kidnapping, one can confidently dismiss this speculation. Even the strange-sounding sentences from the Bavarian files can be easily explained if you consider the context and the threats of a liberation campaign that have been coming in since September 9, 1972. "Without Culmann and Laquer, there would undoubtedly have been another tragedy," Israeli historian Eitan Marc Mashiah told WELT. "On the basis of the documents viewed" there can be no talk of any agreements.

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