KIDNAPING IN VIENNA, MURDER IN ATHENS - 1976/01/05
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
03258235
Release Decision:
RIFPUB
Original Classification:
U
Document Page Count:
1
Document Creation Date:
April 3, 2019
Document Release Date:
April 12, 2019
Sequence Number:
Case Number:
Publication Date:
January 5, 1976
File:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 KIDNAPING IN VIENNA, MURD[15500348].pdf [3] | 111.21 KB |
Body:
TERRORISTS
Approved for Release: 2018/09/17 C03258235
TIME
5 JANUARY 1976
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litical department of the Palestine Lib-
eration Organization, charged that the
aim of the terrorists was to split OPEC
and deprive the Third World of its most
effective weapon against the West. It
was so counterproductive to Palestinian
goals, he added darkly, that itmust have
been engineered by American imperi-
alists and Zionists�a patently absurd
charge.
Who, in fact, were the six members
of the so-called Arm of the Arab Rev-
olution that assaulted OPEC headquar-
ters? Their leader was probably a flam-
boyantly notorious Latin American'
terrorist who goes by-the name of "Car-
los" (see box). Two others, according to
Algerian authorities, were Palestinians,
anti one was Lebanese. Two were Eu-
ropean, one an unidentified woman In
her early 20s. possibly Irish or English.
and the other Hans-Joachim Klein, 28,
who. worked in a lawyer's office in
-Frankfurt and associated with radicals.
� OPEC's Money. The Vienna-terror-
ists appeared to be linked with George -
Habash's fanatical Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine. which neither
confirmed nor denied that it had had a
part in the operation. In any event, the
� terrorists' gesture seemed to be aimed
beyond the Palestinian cause to the cre-
ation of radical regimes throughout the
Arab world. The delegates of Iran and
Saudi Arabia, the two major conserva-
tive states in the Middle East. were told
by the kidnapers that they would he the
first executed. OPEC officials from coun-
tries belonging to the anti-Israel "rejec-
tion front"�Algeria. Iraq and Libya
e,An Wemic. of political violence
and murder shattered the peace of a
week in which millions of people
throughout the world honored the birth
of Christ. The most dramatic incident
was the kidnaping of eleven oil
minis-
ters in Vienna,. Then, in Athens, the
chief of the CIA office in Greece was slain
by three gunmen as he returned home
from a. Christmas party. In Lebanon, an
estimated 230 people were killed and an
other 400 kidnaped in that country's
civil war. In Argentina, more than 85
leftists died in clashes with the army as
President Isabel 'Peron struggled to
-maintain power (see story page 47). In
Ethiopia, another U.S. civilian was kid-
naped by Eritrean rebels, bringing to
five the number of .Americans held by
the Eritreans. "We have been saying it
for years," observed one intelligence of-
ficial in Israel, the primary target of
Arab terrorist attacks. "The world is fac-
ing a- new wave of organized terror. But
who has paid attention?" .
Absurd Charge. Now everyone is,
including Some Arab and Palestinian
leaders who had p.reviouSly .supported
terrorism, Suddenly they found the ter-
ror pointed in their direction. Breaking
into a meeting of the Organization of Pe-
troleum Exporting Countries (OnEn), six
people, five men and a woman, held cap-
tive more than 60 people, including elev-
en oil .ministers. After all-night nego-
tiations with the Austrian government,
the terrorists secured an Austrian Air-
lines DO-9 and took the ministers and
some 30 other members of their dele-
gations.to Algiers. Tripoli, and back to
Algiers again before releasing them. No
one aboard the plane was hurt, but three
were killed and eight others wounded
in the initial assault in Vienna. Salah
K.halaf, the No. 2 man of Fatah, the larg-
est Palestinian commando group, de-
nounced the attack on OPEC's headquar-
ters as a "criminal act" designed to
"undermine the nature of the Palestin-
ian struggle at a time when it is pro-
ducing major victories on the interna-
tional level."
Farouk Kaddotimi, head of the no-
e.4
e -
SLAIN CIA AGENT RICHARD WELCH
"At No. 5 Queen Frederica."
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-Approved for Release: 2018/09/17 C03258235