Airstrip One

Such nice people

This article below comes from the Intelligence Digest of the European Foundation.

I. Fishy Fischer – and other German developments

One of Europe’s "most original thinkers"

This was how Joschka Fischer has been described by the Europhiles in the Financial Times, because of the super-federalist proposals for the future of Europe which he presented "in a personal capacity" to the Humboldt University in Berlin last May.

This admiration has persisted in spite of the fact that attention has been increasingly devoted this week in Germany to Mr. Fischer’s past as a street hoodlum and violent extreme left-wing agitator. The judicial authorities in Frankfurt have been presented with new evidence about a demonstration in 1976 in which a policeman was severely injured in a fire bomb attack. Although Fischer is not currently wanted for questioning, he took part in and organised the demonstration, to protest against the suicide of Ulrike Meinhof, the demonstrators’ idol who they claimed had been killed in prison. As such, Fischer could be liable for prosecution for sharing responsibility for the attack. He was detained at the time of the demonstration but released shortly afterwards.

Fischer has always claimed that he had nothing to do with the Molotov cocktail. But one of the policemen against whom the attack was directed has said that he considers the former street fighter and current foreign minister to be "morally responsible" for what happened. This is because the suspicion remains that, the day before the demo, Fischer called for Molotov cocktails to be used. The policeman says it is irrelevant whether he then actually threw one or not. "For me," he said, "it was a murderous attack on our lives and that does not pass away with time." Fischer claims in an interview with the Spiegel magazine – which shows pictures of Fischer beating a policeman in 1973 - that he never called for the use of fire bombs.

The pictures also show Fischer fighting side by side with Hans-Joachim Klein, the former terrorist and accomplice of Carlos the Jackal who is currently on trial in Frankfurt for murder thanks to his role in an attack on an OPEC meeting in Vienna in 1975, in which Klein is accused of having murdered three men. Fischer is an old friend of Klein’s and is due to appear in court as a witness on 16th January.

Fischer’s claims that he had nothing to do with the Molotov cocktails have been rejected by two people in the know. The former left-wing extremist and biographer of Fischer, Christian Schmidt, has said, "There is only one man who could have avoided the predictable disaster and that man was the man who directed the discussion, Comrade Fischer personally. But he seemed not to care and called for the use of the wonder weapon." Even more dramatic have been the accusations against Fischer by the daughter of his former idol Ulrike Meinhof, Bettina Röhl. Ms Röhl has accused Fischer of calling for the use of Molotov cocktails. She has written an open letter to the president of the Republic, accusing Mr. Fischer of attempted murder. She alleges that the Molotov cocktail attacks were specifically planned by Fischer as a protest against what the extreme left was convinced was Ulrike Meinhof’s murder. [La Repubblica, 9th January 2001]