Jugoslavija in mednarodni terorizem v sedemdesetih letih.
Yugoslavia and international terrorism in the 1970s

two cases of non-extradition of terrorists to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)

Summary/Abstract: In the middle of the 1970s the West German urban guerrilla terrorism began to escalate. The actions of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) group culminated in the autumn of 1977 with the kidnapping and murder of the industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, hijacking of Lufthansa Landshut airplane, and suicide of the core group of the RAF’s first generation in the Stammheim prison in Stuttgart. Since the beginning of the 1970s, RAF had collaborated closely with the Palestinian terrorists, whose acts were, in principle, not condemned by Yugoslavia with the aim of fostering good relations with the Arab countries. When in September 1976 an airplane landed in Belgrade with Carlos the Jackal, at the time the most wanted terrorist connected with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, and the German terrorist Hans-Joachim Klein on board, the FRG demanded their extradition. The Yugoslav leadership refused the extradition claiming that the passengers were not the said terrorists. Similar events took place two years later, when four RAF terrorists - Rolf Clemens Wagner, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Peter-Jürgen Boock and Sieglinde Hofmann - arrived to Yugoslavia. Once again Yugoslavia refused to extradite them to the West Germany. This refusal was substantiated with the accusations that the West Germany had not taken measures to repress the terrorist and other subversive actions of the Croatian political emigration aimed at the representatives of Yugoslavia and Yugoslav citizens in Germany. Both cases resulted in a temporary deterioration of the relationship between the two states, but the situation normalised promptly, as both sides were interested in maintaining good bilateral relations. The aim of this article is to analyse the events in both cases of the terrorists staying in Yugoslavia, and to discover the reasons behind the Yugoslav leadership’s decision to deny the West Germany’s demands for the extradition of the terrorists.

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