Ambush in a "Civil War"

After a brutal kidnaping Bonn plans to get tough on terrorists

The two-car armed convoy that wound its way through Cologne's streets last week was bringing well-known Industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, 62, home from his downtown office. Suddenly the blue Mercedes carrying Schleyer screeched to a halt in order to avoid crashing into a yellow sedan that was blocking half the street and a baby carriage that had rolled across the other half. Sensing danger, the driver of the convoy's second car pulled up behind Schleyer's auto. As three of the bodyguards jumped out, they and Schleyer's chauffeur were mowed down by at least 300 machine-gun bullets, fired by about half a dozen terrorists. His ambushed guards sprawled dead in pools of blood, Schleyer was dragged into a white Volkswagen Kombi bus and whisked away.

The abduction sent waves of anger and fear rippling through West Germany The brutal incident was the latest round in what many West Germans have begun calling a civil war between their government and a small army of nihilistic urban terrorists bent on disrupting public order. Since April, Chief Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback has been gunned down on the streets of Karlsruhe and Banker Juergen Ponto slain inside his estate near Frankfurt (TIME, Aug. 15). A report by the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Office) estimates that some 1,200 persons in West Germany could become active and dangerous at any time," and an additional 6,000 might give the terrorists "more than verbal support " No wonder that traditionally law-abiding West Germans are clamoring loudly for Bonn to take swift and decisive action against what appears to be a terrorist epidemic.

The daring, meticulously executed kidnaping was a humiliating shock to authorities. Less than two weeks before it happened, police had warned Schleyer that he might be in danger and urged him to travel with bodyguards, as an increasing number of German businessmen have been doing. Not only had police found the initials H.M. (possibly standing for Schleyer's first names) on papers in the possession of terrorists, but the industrialist was also a natural target. A director of Daimler-Benz, Schleyer also heads both the Federation of German Industries and the Confederation of German Employers--the country's two most powerful business associations. He has often appeared on television as a spokesman for Big Business on policy issues and labor disputes

After receiving word of the abduction Chancellor Helmut Schmidt dropped all other work to take personal command of a special "crisis staff' composed of high officials, security police and crime experts. A nationwide alert was ordered, and Schmidt made a televised appeal for all Germans to cooperate in the search.

The day after the abduction, the kidnapers made six demands in a letter that was anonymously left at a police station. It was signed Kommando Siegfried Hausner, R.A.F.--referring to a terrorist who lied after a 1975 attack on the West German embassy in Stockholm. The initials stand for the now familiar Red Army Faction, which had killed both Buback and Ponto. The kidnapers' message warned that Schleyer would be killed unless eleven terrorists were released from German prisons, each given 100,000 deutsche marks (about $43,000), and flown out of the country. Among the eleven: Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin, the top members of the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang, who are serving life sentences for the 1972 bombing murders of four U.S. servicemen and 34 attempted killings.

To guarantee the safety of the freed terrorists, the kidnapers demanded that they be accompanied on their flight out of Germany by Swiss Human Rights Activist Denis Payot and by Protestant Theologian Martin Niemoeller, 85, famed for his opposition to Hitler. (Niemoeller said he was willing to go.) As proof that Schleyer was still alive the terrorists sent federal officials a video tape of the industrialist in captivity

The government replied to the kidnapers' demands with a series of cryptic messages that sporadically interrupted radio and TV programs. In one announcement, for example, it was stated that the Federal Criminal Office agreed to "No 5." After the government released the kidnapers' letter, puzzled West Germans learned that the number referred to a specific demand of the terrorists. Item No. 5 was that the government publish the letter, which concluded with a cool insult: "We are assuming that Schmidt will make every effort to clarify his relationship with this fat magnate of the cream of national industry."

At week's end federal authorities had not yet identified the kidnapers by name. But as admitted members of the Red Army Faction, they presumably conform to a generic profile of the contemporary terrorists put together by the computers of the Federal Criminal Office. Almost all the known disciples of Andreas Baader are well-educated products of respectable--sometimes prominent--middle-and upper-middle-class homes. Unlike the student radicals of the late '60s who lashed out against "capitalist exploitation," imperialism and the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, today's German terrorists seem strikingly apolitical. In the coffeehouses of university towns, they are called Spontis--for spontaneous radicals who do not bother with ideology but simply want to destroy the present system, regardless of the consequences. "It's a bit frightening," observes a security officer from a Western country who serves as a liaison in Bonn. "When we kick down doors looking for these people at home, we find almost always tons of literature--wall-to-wall Marx and Marcuse. But here, they find nothing--no literature, just weapons."

The nihilism of the terrorists worries West Germans; so does the inability--so far--of the government to subdue them. In what Chancellery Spokesman Dr. Armin Gruenewald called a "tragic coincidence," the Cabinet last week adopted measures to strengthen Bonn's hand against the terrorists. The Cabinet action had no direct connection with the Schleyer kidnaping, since it had been prompted by measures tabled five months ago by the Christian Democratic opposition. The two sets of proposals, which the Bundestag will consider this month, agreed on a number of key points: 1) the trial of terrorists would be speeded and prison terms toughened; 2) radical attorneys would be curbed from abusing the privileges of the lawyer-client relationship (see box); 3) coordination of federal, state and local police should be improved to track down the terrorists more effectively.

Such measures would bolster Bonn's police powers--a development that also worries many Germans in view of their country's Nazi past. But if the mood of the country in the wake of the Schleyer kidnaping is any guide, most Germans today feel that the dangers of increased terrorism are far greater than the risk of democratically elected governments in Bonn misusing increased powers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.