1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attacks

 The Munich Olympic disaster or Munich Massacre was a terrorist attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, on September 5, 1972. The Black September group, a Palestinian terrorist group, tried to negotiate with 11 Israeli Olympic teams hostage, but all of its members were killed due to a lack of German police crackdowns on terrorism.

the circumstances of an event

a squad invasion

The Games were halted early on 5 September 1972 when eight members of the Black September squad stormed the Israeli athletes' quarters in the Olympic village, killing Israeli wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Yosef Romano and holding the remaining nine hostage.

a statement of crime

Black September issued a statement calling for the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners of conscience imprisoned in Israel, but then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Mayer refused to comply with the request and asked West Germany to agree to resolve the situation through Israeli forces.

negotiation

West German authorities and criminal groups agreed to begin negotiations and escape by plane to the Egyptian capital of Cairo.

And it was agreed that two helicopters would travel from the athletes' village to Munich International Airport, where the plane was prepared, and then escape from the country on a prepared plane, but this was ostensibly a story.

a gunfight

The helicopter landed at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Force Base, and two of the gang members checked the ready plane and left the plane, but the bullets failed to knock down all of the group and ended up in a firefight.

The gunfire took place for a long time and ended with the worst results, with all nine hostages and one police officer killed, as the criminals violently resisted by destroying a helicopter with a grenade.

Five of the eight were killed and the remaining three were arrested while trying to escape, but the three were released on October 29, 1972 in the kidnapping of Lufthansa Flight 615.

German mistakes and lessons

The incident escalated the damage due to a sniper failure. The main cause is the lack of information. Initially, the German side knew the number of terrorists at five, but it was actually eight. It was only later discovered that the number of terrorists was eight, but this information was not delivered to the airport's sniper team.

At that time, the German police had no counter-terrorism unit, so they deployed a general police officer who had little training in suppressing operations at the Olympic Village. The attempt to suppress the Olympic Village was broadcast live by the media, and the Black September group was aware of it on TV. Recognizing that the crackdown was exposed, the German police canceled the operation.

Numerous mistakes also led to catastrophe in suppression operations at the airport. Police waiting on the Boeing 727 had to suppress the incoming terrorists, but did not carry out the operation because they feared the terrorists would blow up the plane with grenades.

Helicopters landing at the airport were scheduled to land in a direction that provided good visibility for control tower snipers, but in reality, they landed in a direction that looked at the control tower, disrupting the sniper's operations. Snipers were armed with Heckler & Koch G3s without scopes or night vision, which were not suitable for snipers. Also, the two snipers were on the diagonal of the control tower snipers.

There are many other factors, but one reason is that the West German military's activities in Germany were not recognized during peacetime due to constitutional restrictions in West Germany.

The West German government created the 9th Group of the Border Guard (GSG-9), a special anti-terrorism unit, and commissioned gun manufacturers to design semi-automatic sniper rifles, following the lessons of the failure to shoot. Walther developed the WA2000 in response, but it was not adopted. Instead, PSG-1, developed by Heckler & Koch, will be hired in Germany and other countries around the world.

Israeli retaliatory operations

In response to the incident, the Israeli government orders the air force to shell Palestinian guerrilla bases in retaliation. This killed hundreds of Palestinians.

Operation God's Fury

Israel plans the assassination of a member of the Black September squad to prevent a repeat of the attacks, similar to the retaliation inflicted. After organizing a secret committee of Golda Mayer and senior ministers, the committee ordered the intelligence agency Mossad to collect information on those directly or indirectly involved in the Munich disaster, and based on this information, the committee decided on the target of assassination. He ordered a unit called Bayonet inside Mossad to carry out the assassination.

The first person to be assassinated was Arafat's nephew and translator, "Abdel Wael Zwaiteer", who was shot inside his home apartment in Rome. Even after that, Mossad's agents assassinated Target one after another with guns or remote-controlled bombs. However, Black September also launched a counterattack, killing Mossad's agents and informants.

On 9 April 1973, Israeli forces and Mossad raided the apartment of PLO and Black September executives in Beirut, killing three of them: "Kamal Nasser", "Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar", and "Kamal Adwan". At this time, the assassination unit moved from Israel to Beirut by ship and dressed half as a woman to avoid the enemy's eyes, but was discovered by the guards and a gunfight broke out, and after a forced breakthrough, they succeeded in killing the executive. Beirut was the home of the PLO at the time, so it was a military operation in the middle of the enemy. The commander of the unit was Ehud Barak, who later became Prime Minister of Israel, who also dressed as a woman and took part in the attack on apartment buildings by executives.

It turned out that Mossad's assassination plan killed unrelated civilians as people changed. In Lillehammer, Norway, on 21 July 1973, Mossad shot a man named "Ali Hassan Salameh", the black screen of the Munich disaster, standing at a bus stop, but this man was a completely unrelated Moroccan. Five of the Mossad operatives were arrested by Norwegian police and confiscated their cars and identification cards. European countries expressed regret over Israel's actions, as some of the arrested agents confessed to plans to assassinate Mossad in other European countries, but after Mossad's "Ali Hasan Sarame" in Beirut, Mossad noted that he was a womanizer and gathered information about him. On January 22, 1979, Assassination Unit and Chambers set up a car bomb in a place where his car passed, detonating him with the car and killing him. Chambers left the country immediately after his assassination and disappeared, and the operation ended with the murder of "Ali Hasan Sarame".