Comment and Opinion
World Affairs Journal: Revisiting the 1972 Munich Massacre, by Alan Johnson
“Was it the far right or the far left that helped Palestinian terrorists murder 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics in 1972? The German periodical Der Spiegel has studied 2,000 pages of released files from the domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), and concluded that two German neo-Nazis, Willi Pohl and Wolfgang Abramowski, supplied the Palestinians with fake passports, drove them around Germany, and possibly helped supply some of the weapons.
Apparently, months before the massacre, police in Dortmund sent the BfV a note about “presumed conspiratorial activity by Palestinian terrorists” and pointed to meetings in Germany between Pohl and Mohammed Daoud (a.k.a. Abu Daoud), the brains behind the Munich massacre. When Pohl himself was arrested in October 1972, he was in possession of submachine guns, hand grenades, and other weapons that matched those used in the massacre. The documents secured by Der Spiegel suggest he was planning further attacks within Germany at the behest of the PLO.”