Gunmen release women

Press, 8 September 1982, Page 1

Gunmen release women

NZPA Berne Gunmen holding diplomats hostage in the Polish embassy, in Berne released two women members of the staff last evening (New Zealandtime) a Ministry of Justice spokesman said. Onlookers said that the elderly, grey-haired women were driven away from the building’s back door. The women were non-dip-lomatic members of the staff, the spokesman said. He could not give further details.

Earlier, a pregnant woman had been freed.

Five gunmen seized the embassy and about 10 diplomat hostages on Monday evening (New Zealand time). The officials said that the gunmen were armed' with heavy -machine-guns and about 25 kilograms of explosives, and threatened to blow up themselves and their captives unless Poland’s military Government ended martial law, released political prisoners, and closed prison camps. After a day of negotiations with Swiss officials, the gunmen demanded and received medicine and food, and later asked for a doctor. Shortly before midnight, a black limousine drew up at the embassy and drove away with 1 the pregnant woman. She was reported to be a member of the embassy staff, but was not named. In a note written in Polish and thrown out of an embassy window, the gunmen

identified themselves as members of the Polish “Home army — front of national liberation” — evoking memories of an antiCommunist force which staged an ill-fated uprising against Nazi occupation in Warsaw in 1944.

The seizing of the embassy, the first big guerrilla action inside or outside of Roland since the martial law clampdown in Poland last December, began when the gunmen strolled casually and virtually unnoticed into the building. Then a man with a German accent telephoned the gunmen’s demands to the police and security forces took up positions around the embassy.

The. Swiss Government; which condemned the takeover as a criminal act, approached the Polish Government, which called on the Swiss authorities to ensure the safety of the embassy staff , and restore conditions for normal embassy working. A Ministry of Justice spokesman, Mr Ulrich Hubacher, said that this gave the Swiss officials “a green light for possible intervention”, but he said that any move would have to be decided by the Government. Warsaw Radio, in a commentary on the embassy attack, described it as a serious tactical error by antiCommunist extremists.

Gunmen unknown, page 8