Blood and Rage_ A Cultural History of Terrorism - Michael Burleigh [162]
The hijackers informed the Somali authorities that they would blow the plane up if the RAF prisoners had not been released by 5 p.m. their time. They bound the passengers and crew, dousing them with all the alcohol on board the plane. With minutes to go before they killed the hostages, the chief German negotiators who had flown in earlier that day managed to have the deadline put back to 3.30 the following morning, claiming that the RAF prisoners were on their way. They would arrive in Somalia at 4 a.m. When darkness fell, the hijackers failed to notice the arrival of another plane with its windows darkened. Nor did they see the shadowy figures who crept about beneath the cabin, placing listening devices. German negotiators indulged Mahmoud, in order to keep him in the cockpit. At 10 p.m. local time he was blinded by stun grenades which detonated outside the windows. Within seconds the plane’s doors were opened and black-clad figures worked their way through the aircraft, shouting ‘Where are the bastards?’ They shot three of the hijackers dead, including Mahmoud, and critically wounded the fourth. The passengers were then thrown down the escape chutes. The entire rescue mission was over in a couple of minutes. On hearing the success of Operation Magic Fire the normally reserved Hamburger Helmut Schmidt cried tears of relief.
News of this triumph was broadcast by the German media later that night. Listening to Suddeutschen Rundfunk was Jan-Carl Raspe in his cell at Stammheim. Using their cell-to-cell communication system, Baader, Raspe, Ensslin and Irmgard Möller resolved to kill themselves, while endeavouring to make this seem like an act of murder by the German government. Baader retrieved the pistol he had hidden in an empty cell from the compartment he had built in his record player. The last music he heard was Eric Clapton’s ‘There’s One in Every Crowd’. He fired a few shots into the wall and his mattress before shooting himself through the neck. He had already put the empty cartridges near his own body to make it seem as if he had been executed. Raspe used a Heckler & Koch 9 mm to shoot himself in the temple. In Cell 720 Gudrun Ensslin took a length of cable from her stereo, fashioned a noose and threaded it through the fly mesh separating her from the cell’s bars. She then hung herself by kicking away the stool she was standing on. In Cell 725 Irmgard Moller stabbed herself repeatedly in the left breast, failing to puncture her heart. She would later claim that this was the work of the German secret service acting in consort with the CIA. All of them were discovered when the cells were opened for breakfast at about eight o’clock the following morning.
In faraway Baghdad, the leaders of the RAF went into shock, with the exception of Brigitte Mohnhaupt. Long before these deaths had occurred, she had explained to Susanne Albrecht that if the hijacking was unsuccessful the Stammheim prisoners had resolved to kill themselves, in order to blame their deaths on the German government. There was one more death in this cycle of violence. On 19 October 1977, a caller informed the French newspaper Liberation that Schleyer’s body could be found in a green Audi 100 parked in Mulhouse. After forty-three days the RAF had decided to ‘put an end to his lamentable and corrupt existence’ by shooting him three times in the head. As Schleyer had grass in his mouth and pine needles stuck to his crumpled suit, it was presumed he had been murdered in a wood, probably in Alsace. At his funeral the German president apologised to his son and widow that they had not done enough