Germany announces a new commission of inquiry into the Munich Olympics massacre

21 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The German government has announced this Friday the launch of a new commission to “re-evaluate in depth” the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the hands of the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September during the Munich Olympic Games in 1972.

This commission will be made up of eight historians and will function under the responsibility of the German Ministry of the Interior. The group will be in charge, specifically, of investigating the reasons and the effects of the massacre perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorists.

The Munich massacre began at 4:00 a.m. on September 5, 1972, when eight members of Black September entered the Olympic Village and kidnapped the Israeli athletes to demand the release of 236 prisoners, most of them Palestinian.

The kidnapping ended 20 hours later at the city’s international airport with a failed attempt by German police to rescue the athletes. The eleven kidnapped athletes died, along with five members of Black September and a policeman from the then Federal Republic of Germany (or West Germany).

The incident marked one of the early heights of the era of international terrorism that would dominate the 1970s. By 1968 there were eleven terrorist groups operating around the world. After the Munich massacre, the number increased to more than fifty, according to the investigator of the Council of International Relations, Bruce Hoffman, to the American public network NPR.

The commission is a consequence of the agreement reached in September of last year between the German Government and the families of the deceased, who received compensation of 28 million euros and the apologies of the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for the numerous errors of the device. of security.

“We will never be able to undo the immeasurable suffering that the relatives of the victims of the attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics have experienced. The attack has left deep wounds,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser acknowledged in the official statement of the announcement of the commission, published on the website of the Ministry of the Interior.

“It is shameful that distressing issues such as these have remained unresolved for so long. For too many years there has been a lack of understanding of the facts, of transparency about them and, ultimately, of debugging responsibilities,” he said. added.

The commission will hold its first meeting in the fall of this year, shortly before the 51st anniversary of the attack.