Closing In on an Elusive Enemy

A sequence of triumphs after some occasional bungling

Residents of Luettringshausen, a suburb of Dortmund, West Germany, were startled early last week by the sound of gunshots issuing from a dense forest only 200 yds. from a crowded autobahn. Police investigating the reports surprised two men and a woman blazing away with pistols at a newspaper pinned to a tree. The trio turned their weapons on the police, killing one officer and wounding another in the thigh. The wounded cop managed to shoot two of the attackers, who were later identified as Michael Knoll, 27, and Angelika Speitel, 26, both members of the terrorist Red Army Faction. Speitel is wanted in connection with the kidnap and murder of Industrialist Harms-Martin Schleyer and the deaths of Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback and Banker Juergen Ponto.

The capture of Knoll and Speitel was the latest in a month-long string of triumphs for West German antiterrorist forces. After more than a year of intensive man hunting, they are closing in on the country's elusive urban guerrillas. Of the 25 most wanted terrorists, twelve have now been apprehended or slain. Among the other coups:

> Four weeks ago Duesseldorf police were summoned to a restaurant by a diner who had recognized Willy Peter Stoll, a suspect in the Schleyer case. Stoll was killed in a shootout with plainclothesmen. A few days later suspicious neighbors called police to an apartment where they found Stoll's crudely coded diary, an arsenal of weapons (including a homemade "Stalin Organ" capable of firing primitive missiles) and fingerprints of six of Stoll's RAF comrades.

>In Wiesbaden the following week, police raided an apartment stocked with guns, ammunition and 30 kg of explosives. They also found evidence that led to the arrests of Sylvia Herzinger, 33, and Leila Bocook, 25, both suspected of belonging to the Revolutionary Cell, a group responsible for a rash of bombings and arson in Frankfurt, Mainz and Wiesbaden.

>In London, Scotland Yard detectives nabbed Astrid Proll, 31, wanted for taking part in the 1970 attack that freed Terrorist Andreas Baader. Scheduled to stand trial on attempted murder and bank robbery charges with others in the Baader-Meinhof gang, Proll had been released from custody for medical reasons and had jumped bail. When arrested, she was working at a government-sponsored vocational training school.

This recent police performance is a welcome contrast to the occasional bungling previously displayed by terrorist hunters. In September a Bundestag committee disclosed that antiterrorist police had allowed Stoll and the other RAF suspects, Adelheid Schulz and Christian Klar, to get away after keeping them under close surveillance for two weeks. The cops had even photographed the trio boarding a rented helicopter to make aerial reconnaissance surveys of the homes of potential victims. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt ordered a shake-up of the antiterrorist force.

West Germany has also stiffened its antiterrorist laws, stepped up its collaboration with police in other countries and developed new investigative techniques. Perhaps the most important factors in the captures have been tips supplied by citizens who have recognized the fugitives and alerted the police.

Officials believe the terrorists, though crippled, are far from neutralized. Some 75 hard-core urban guerrillas are still at large, and intelligence reports indicate that a number of them are slipping back into West Germany. "The danger is far from over," warns a chancellery official. "The terrorists are bound to hit again and hit hard."

In Italy a spate of bombings in several cities confirmed that terrorists there were still on the loose. A 46-year-old foreman at the Lancia automobile plant in Turin was fatally wounded by Red Brigades assassins. Next day, Ippolito Bestonso, 66, an Alfa Romeo executive, was "kneecapped" outside his home in Milan by three youths who fired six bullets into his legs. In no hurry to flee, they followed up the shooting by handcuffing their victim and hanging a poster bearing the red star symbol of the Red Brigades around his neck.

Investigators in Rome were having no luck getting information from Corrado Alunni, 30, a prime suspect in the kidnap-murder of former Premier Aldo Moro. Alunni has brushed off every question by reciting the terrorist version of name, rank and serial number: "I consider myself a fighting Communist and a political prisoner in a state concentration camp and do not intend to collaborate with this system of justice." Even so, the probe into Alunni's recent whereabouts shed some light on the sybaritic life-style that Europe's leftist outlaws can occasionally afford. Not long before his arrest in Milan, Alunni and his paramour, Maria Zoni, had spent two blissful weeks in a $700-a-month cottage in the Calabrian resort of Tropea.

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