Munich Olympic Terrorist Attacks: German Ex-Interior Minister Disputes Torture Claims

The conflict on a Israeli organisation during a 1972 Olympic Games in Munich took place over 40 years ago, yet Wolfgang Eisenmenger still has accurate memories of a day after. Eisenmenger was 28-years-old during a time and yet he would go on to turn a eminent consultant in his field, he had usually usually assimilated a Forensic Institute during a University of Munich.

That day, he was together with around a dozen others — colleagues, a judge, a prosecutor and several troops officers — in a autopsy room. The mood was forbidding as Eisenmenger and a other doctors worked silently during a autopsy tables. Their charge was that of examining 16 bodies, yet their initial priority was a Israeli victims since Tel Aviv was insisting that their stays be fast repatriated. Later, a coroners achieved autopsies on a Palestinian hostage-takers and that of a Munich troops officer who had been killed in a firefight.

The apprehension commando infiltrated a Olympic Village in a early morning hours of Sept. 5 and took 11 Israeli athletes and commission members hostage. Early on, a Palestinians shot and killed wrestling manager Moshe Weinberg and middleweight weight-lifter Yossef Romano after a dual had attempted to quarrel behind and wring a weapons from a perpetrators. The other Israelis died that dusk during a Fürstenfeldbruck troops airfield when a troops launched a rescue attempt, in response to that a hostage-takers killed their victims. Five terrorists were also killed in a operation.

Just hours after a gun battle, Eisenmenger gathering to Fürstenfeldbruck with his trainer to inspect a scene. A brief time later, a stays of a victims were brought to a Forensic Institute and a autopsies began.

Nothing that Couldn’t Be Explained By Events

Eisenmenger remembers anticipating zero that was quite surprising. None of a bodies of a Israelis, he recalls, displayed injuries that couldn’t be explained by what had happened. The matter competence sound rather mundane, yet it is noteworthy. On Tuesday, a New York Times reported that a Israeli victims had been tortured before to their deaths. The paper wrote that a enemy had damaged their victims’ skeleton and that a 32-year-old Romano, father of three, had been castrated in front of a others, possibly while he was still alive or after he had died.

The essay perceived poignant courtesy worldwide. The British Independent deplored a torture, a Kurier in Vienna wrote of “sadistic abuse,” and a worried regressive Israeli daily Israel HaYom compared a Olympic enemy with Islamic State, observant that a Palestinian apprehension organisation was “a precursor” of IS.

The New York Times square is a product of interviews with Ilana Romano, a widow of a murdered weight lifter, and with Ankie Spitzer, who mislaid her husband, fencing manager André Spitzer, during a unsuccessful raid during Fürstenfeldbruck. The dual women showed a story’s author photos of a victims — images that they feel tell a transparent story. The New York Times inaugurated not to imitation a photos due to their striking nature, yet concluded with a interpretation of a dual women. It wasn’t a initial time that Spitzer had done a woe claims. But it was a initial time that such a distinguished news opening had been peaceful to listen.

Genscher Says He ‘Never Heard Anything’ About Torture

But a statements of coroner Eisenmenger expel doubt on a story. He says that “none of a victims showed indications of woe or a unconcern of genitalia.” And he isn’t a usually declare who is doubtful of a woe claims. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who was German interior apportion during a time and partial of a predicament organisation fabricated during a Fürstenfeldbruck airport, says currently he “never listened anything about (torture) possibly strictly or unofficially.”

Genscher was one of a final people to see a victims alive. He was partial of a organisation that was negotiating with a terrorists, who had primarily demanded an sell for a recover of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, a ask deserted by Tel Aviv. When a kidnappers afterwards demanded to be flown to Egypt with their captives, Genscher insisted on being authorised to pronounce with a hostages.

He entered a Israeli buliding of a Olympic Village during around 5 p.m. Romano was still fibbing on a floor, lonesome by a sheet. The others were sitting together in a tiny room, their hands and feet firm and gave Genscher a sense of being composed. They gave him a list of their names and spoke with him. Genscher says he “didn’t have a sense that they had been tortured.” Might he have been wrong?

Spitzer and Romano, both 69, pronounce for a families of a Israeli victims of a conflict — and they are intensely doubtful of both a Forensic Institute where Eisenmenger worked and of ex-minister Genscher.

Prior to a hostage-taking, German officials had abandoned warnings of an imminent attack. Furthermore, a rescue try during Fürstenfeldbruck was intensely amateurish. In a aftermath, officials in a West German and Bavarian governments adopted a a adage formulated in a chit by a deputy of a Foreign Ministry. “Mutual incriminations contingency be avoided,” a memo reads. “Also, no self-criticism.” SPIEGEL initial reported on a existence of a agreement in 2012.

Callous Treatment By German Authorities

Spitzer, a publisher creatively from a Netherlands, spent a Games visiting her relatives in Holland. She spent years fighting opposite a overpower emanating from a sovereign government, a Bavarian supervision and a city of Munich. Spitzer can furnish shamefully cruel letters from German officials, such as one from a comparison Munich director who sensitive her that a Munich troops dialect had “never hexed a singular authorised identity” and that she should residence her concerns to “the suitable authorised body.”

In this repository photo, Ankie Spitzer, a widow of murdered fencing manager André Spitzer, is seen observation a ravaged unit of a Israeli athletes in a Munich Olympic Village on Sept. 9, 1972.

One emanate was compensation. Twice, Spitzer and a others sued for damages, and both times they were deserted on a strength of a supervision of limitations. However, anticipating out a law was of equal or even larger significance to a two. But requests to demeanour during box files, Spitzer says today, were regularly rejected. In a years 1972 and 1973, she visited a Forensic Institute in Munich 3 times and demanded entrance to a claim files. She was sent divided all 3 times.

A quarter-century upheld before Germany done any kind of central impressive gesticulate to a victims. In 2000, afterwards German President Johannes Rau met with Spitzer and Romano. Two years later, a German supervision paid out during slightest €3 million to a victims’ families as a charitable gesture. And on a 40th anniversary of a conflict in 2012, Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer betrothed to recover as many papers relating to a deaths as he could.

No Indications of Torture in Documents

The infancy of a papers are kept in supervision repository in Munich, including a autopsy reports of a murdered Israelis, copies of that SPIEGEL has obtained.

They are impressively accurate documents. One report, for example, records that a watch ragged by Zeev Friedman, a 28-year-old weight lifter, was still ticking when his routine physique was carried onto a autopsy table. It pronounced it was 7:51 p.m. Friedman died of inner bleeding.

The coroners also remarkable that Eliezer Halfin, a 24-year-old wrestler who died from a bullet to a heart, had Vivil mints in both breathe pockets. In a news about Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling judge, it says: “The remains is lonesome with a light-green coupler of a kind ragged by judges during a Olympic Games.”

There are no indications of woe in a documents, not even in a news about Yossef Romano. The murderers killed him with 7 shots “to a posterior and to a reduce extremities.” His genitals were injured, yet a news usually allows for a end that a wounds were a product of a bullets. There is no discuss of castration.

Nevertheless, Ilana Romano and Ankie Spitzer trust that their husbands were tortured. SPIEGEL presented them with Yossef Romano’s autopsy report, yet they aren’t assured of a rigor. It is, they say, a news that a German supervision could live with.

SPIEGEL was means to see 4 of a photos that Spitzer and Romano contend they showed the New York Times. Two of a images are of Yossef Romano’s remains in a Israeli entertain of a Olympic Village. He is wearing a white undershirt and there is blood manifest in a area of his genitals — yet usually an consultant competence be means to tell what caused a injury.

Ilana Romano and Ankie Spitzer have no doubts — not after 43 years and all of a pang they have been forced to endure. Ilana Romano says she is certain. “I have a picture. we know what happened.”

Article source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-official-disputes-torture-of-israeli-athletes-in-1972-a-1066179.html#ref=rss