Terrorism New Generation of Violence

By Frederick Painton.

The mindless fanaticism is the same, and the revolutionary jargon sounds all too familiar. After almost ten years of somnolent underground existence, Western Europe's urban guerrilla movements are once more wielding terrorism as a weapon for political disruption. The downfall of capitalism remains a long- term goal, but the immediate targets and the strategy have changed: in a brutal perversion of Western Europe's peace movement, the latest guerrilla campaign of bombings and assassinations is aimed chiefly at Western European defense installations and the 16-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Equally ominous is evidence that terrorist bands in West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and Portugal are beginning to coordinate their deadly operations.

In the Munich suburb of Gauting last week, two members of West Germany's Red Army Faction shot and killed Ernst Zimmermann, 55, chief executive of MTU, a major West German engine manufacturer and well-known defense contractor. Posing as messengers, a young German couple gained entrance to Zimmermann's white stucco home, forced his wife to lie on the floor and took Zimmermann into another room, where they shot him in the head with a revolver. Zimmermann died twelve hours later. It was the second murder by European terrorists in eight days. On Jan. 25, a shadowy French group called Action Directe claimed responsiblity for gunning down General Rene Audran, the chief of arms sales for the French Ministry of Defense, outside his home near Paris.

Only four days before Zimmermann's death, the R.A.F., an offshoot of the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang of the 1970s, smashed windows of six banks and attempted a fire-bombing of an electronics company warehouse in Bremen. It was the 30th such strike by the R.A.F. since early December, when 30 imprisoned members of the terrorist group began a hunger strike for better prison conditions.

Meanwhile, in the southern Portuguese town of Beja, guerrillas of a group known as FP-25 bombed 18 Mercedes-Benz cars belonging mostly to West German military personnel at a German air force training base. No one was seriously injured. Earlier in the week, FP-25 terrorists fired rocket-propelled grenades at six NATO ships in Lisbon harbor. The barrage fell short of the targets.

Returning to Italy from a visit to the U.S. last week, Italian Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini charged that "a terrorist multinational has already been formed in France capable of striking throughout Europe." Spadolini lashed out against the French government for sheltering terrorists "in the name of an anachronistic and self-destructive concept of the right of asylum." According to unofficial sources in Rome, at least 270 suspected or convicted Italian terrorists are being granted haven in France.

The reaction to the Italian charges was swift and angry. "It would be good if each country occupied itself with its own responsibilities," said French Government Spokeswoman Georgina Dufoix. Still, Paris has cause for embarrassment. When the government of President Francois Mitterrand came to power nearly four years ago, it granted amnesty to members of the now outlawed Action Directe, an organization that has carried out nine bombing attacks in the past year in addition to the murder of Audran.

For French police, who have yet to make an arrest in the Audran killing, there was no question that West Germany's Red Army Faction and Action Directe have combined forces into what amounts to a single organization. Said a French official: "There were occasional instances of technical assistance before. The difference now is the tightening of cooperation on a common strategy, with Western defense organizations as primary targets. That has changed the picture entirely."

As a kind of busy subsidiary of the Franco-German terrorist axis, Belgium's Fighting Communist Cells has staged eight bomb attacks since last October, including the multiple blasts that damaged a NATO fuel pipeline in December. France can no longer expect to be spared the terrorism that afflicted West Germany and Italy a decade ago. In a show of bravado, Action Directe and the R.A.F. last month jointly announced a "political-military front in Western Europe." The declared enemy: NATO.

Beyond the rhetoric, police in Belgium and West Germany point out that both guerrilla groups used plastic explosives from a cache of 800 kilograms stolen last year from a quarry in Belgium. Last week, too, French police revealed that just before General Audran was shot, his eldest daughter received a phone call from a woman who asked in a heavy German accent whether her father was home. The French terrorists seem to take pains to identify themselves with their West German counterparts. After Audran's assassination, for example, Action Directe attributed the killing to what it called "the Elizabeth von Dick Commando," named for a member of the Red Army Faction killed by West German police seven years ago.

West German officials do not underestimate the new generation of terrorists, but they tend to regard them as less formidable than their predecessors. They put the number of active R.A.F. commandos at no more than 25. Despite grandiose plans to attack NATO installations, so far the terrorists have struck more often at unprotected civilian businesses or diplomatic sites. Says a West German security specialist: "The current campaign has a momentum of its own. The risk to innocent bystanders is far greater than before. The new terror is less a protest than a sickness. There are twisted minds in every generation."

With reporting by William Dowell/Paris and William McWhirter/Bonn