London: Palestinian terrorists, who killed 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, had received logistic support from neo-Nazis to carry out the massacre, according to newly released German intelligence files.
The Munich city police dossier, which was kept secret for 40 years, the alleged mastermind of the attack Abu Daoud met in Dortmund fascist Willi Pohl, who helped him arranging fake passports and procure weapons that may have been used in the atrocity itself.
Although the files were passed on to German intelligence agency Verfassungsschutz, there is no evidence that the agency acted upon the report. And this lack of action allowed Daoud, named in the files as Saad Walli, to travel the country to meet fellow "Black September" terrorists and plan the attack.
"I chauffeured Abu Daoud through the entire Federal Republic where he met in different cities with Palestinians," Pohl, who is now a crime fiction author, was quoted by the Daily Mail as telling the German magazine 'Der Spiegel'.
The 68-year-old, who insists he had no idea the group were planning the attack, claimed he unwittingly also helped Daoud obtain false passports and other documents.
But, according to the 2,000-page report, Pohl allegedly bragged to his employer later about his contact with the extremists of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Pohl was later asked by the PLO's leadership to carry out vengeance attacks for the police killings of five militants. Several possible attacks were considered, including a hostage-taking at the cathedral in Cologne, it was claimed.
In October 1972, Pohl was arrested in Munich and jailed for two years for possession of illegal weapons. Police had found from him hand grenades, firearms and a letter from Black September addressed to a judge who was preparing to bring charges against Palestinians involved in the Munich massacre.
Black September had used the same sort of grenades, made in Belgium from Swedish explosives, to kill the Israeli hostages, the files showed.
Daoud, who died in 2010, had claimed responsibility for the attack in his 1999 book "Palestine, from Jerusalem to Munich" in which he defended the act as a operation against athletes who were military reservists.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, June 19, 2012, 14:30