Outlawed Leftist guerrilla group bomb suspect

Press, 10 August 1985, Page 11

Outlawed Leftist guerrilla group bomb suspect

NZPA-Reuter Frankfurt The West German police are hunting a dozen suspected members of an outlawed guerrilla group whom they believe could have planted a car bomb on a United States air base that killed two Americans. The Federal Criminal Office, which is leading the inquiry into Thursday’s blast on the Rhein-Main Air Base, named 12 people linked to the outlawed Red Army Faction urban guerrilla group who, it says, could have been responsible. Twenty-three people were also wounded in the attack. The office said that the

bombers’ method had closely resembled two other bombings the Red ArmyFaction said it had done. The early morning blast was widely condemned in West Germany. The Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, sent a message to the United States President, Mr Ronald Reagan, expressing his grief and sympathy for the victims. No-one has claimed responsibility for the bombing. The bomb, placed in a green Volkswagen Passat saloon car parked in front of the headquarters of the 435th Tactical Airlift Wing,

1 wrecked four cars, damaged 30 more and shattered windows over a radius of 150 metres. Twenty of the wounded i were released from hospital yesterday. Two servicemen were being kept in a United States Air Force medical centre in Wiesbaden, and a German civilian woman employee on the base was still being treated at a Frankfurt hospital. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office, in Karlsruhe, said that the attack was similar to a Red Army Faction attempt on a N.A.T.O. military school in Oberammer-

gau, Bavaria, which failed in December because the bomb’s timing device did not work. A spokesman drew a parallel with one four years ago when a car-bomb wounded 18 at the Ramstein Air Base. No-one has been charged over the Oberammergau bomb, but a Red Army Faction suspect, identified as Helmut Pohl, was charged in April over the Ramstein attack. United States and N.A.T.O. military installations have been the target of numerous attacks from mainly Left-wing groups over the last decade.