Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime

by Leif Gw Persson

  “Otherwise the boys from tech will go crazy on us,” he added both judiciously and pedagogically. For regardless of how things went with those inside, there would be a forensic investigation at the crime scene at some point, and much of that would involve attributing discharged bullets to the right weapon. This he knew better than almost anyone else, because he had devoted more than twenty years of his career to investigating serious crimes of violence.

  The opponents inside the embassy had not in any event expressed any active dissatisfaction with the police command’s new tactical arrangements. They had their hands full with monitoring the situation at the same time as negotiations went on with their own government and the Swedish government about the demands that had been made: immediate release of twenty-six comrades from German prisons, among them the leaders of the Baader-Meinhof group. Transport by air to a friendly host country plus twenty thousand dollars on top of that for each and every one of those released. If their demands were not met, they would start shooting hostages, one each hour starting at ten o’clock that evening. It was as simple as that.

  There followed hours of waiting without anything in particular happening while the clock ticked on toward ten. It was decided, for lack of anything better to do, to hasten the preparations for the tear gas attack that had been under consideration for the past few hours.

  The time had reached quarter past ten before the final word from the German government in Bonn—via the Swedish government in Stockholm—reached the terrorists at the embassy. Only a few minutes later someone inside must have got tired, went and fetched the embassy’s trade attaché, led him up to a window, and shot him from behind.

  One of the police detectives, well situated in a so-called nest at a neighboring embassy, saw the trade attaché being murdered, and when he reported his observations—“I think they shot him in the back or the neck”—the head of the homicide squad suddenly lost heart. The promised effects of the Stockholm syndrome, this good, consoling cigar, seemed more remote than ever. It had been less than ten hours and already two of the hostages had been murdered.

  A while later he started to hope again. Eleven o’clock passed without anyone else being shot, and only a few minutes later the terrorists inside the embassy suddenly released three female secretaries from among their hostages. A ray of hope in the gathering April darkness, and … maybe still, thought the head of homicide, for a tear gas attack was not something he was looking forward to. That could only end with further misery. At the same time the authorities had a good idea of how many hostages there were. A rapidly shrinking group, which would not last longer than early morning if the terrorists made good on their promise to execute one per hour.

  The release came at a quarter to midnight. The head of the homicide squad had left the construction shed where he had set up his temporary command room to finally stretch his legs, take a breath of fresh air, and smoke yet another cigarette. First he saw the flash of light from the embassy building, then he felt the shaking in the ground below him, and only after that did he hear the series of explosions. The clouds of glass splinters, building material, smoke, and last of all the screams from the people inside the building. People climbing out of windows, throwing themselves out, jumping, clinging to the façade, tumbling, falling, getting up again, or remaining lying. That was how he remembered it when he thought back, in just that order: the flashes of light, the shaking, the detonations, the smoke, the screams, the people.

  In contrast to the TV reporter who led the live broadcast from the scene, the head of the homicide squad had not jumped off the ground, and whether his feet did rise or spread was none of his doing in any event. On the other hand he had thought a bit. I’ll be damned, he thought, despite the fact that normally he never swore. Then he put out his cigarette and returned to his chair in the temporary command center. Clearly high time, for inside it was already a complete circus.

  Half an hour later it was almost all over, and wonder of wonders, with one exception all of them—the terrorists and their hostages and his colleagues down in the basement of the embassy and in the vicinity of the building—seemed to have survived the explosion. A number were wounded, a few were even seriously wounded, but they were all alive.

  The terrorists were seized, and if he and his colleagues weren’t completely mistaken, it was a clean sweep. In any event everyone his detectives and investigators had been able to observe and count up earlier in the day and evening. One was still inside the embassy; he had just been found, or at least half of him, and he had been identified several hours previously. Four of the culprits were seized in the parking lot behind the embassy building, where they had most likely gathered in a vain attempt to flee in the rented car in which they had driven there twelve hours earlier—which was stupid of them because the police had already secured that car in the afternoon.

  The fifth and last of the terrorists was seized as he was staggering around in the garden of the Norwegian embassy. Sooty and with clothes smoldering, hair singed off, burned all over, blinded, completely confused, he was at first mistaken for one of the hostages. But that part had been sorted out. Three of them were taken to the hospital, one in poor and one in miserable condition, but two had been in good enough condition to be sent directly to the jail in police headquarters after bandaging. All of them were in handcuffs, and two of them with ankle shackles to be on the safe side.

  Jarnebring had left just after two in the morning, one of the last from the squad. Remaining were his colleagues with the uniformed police who would attend to guarding the barricades, and the technicians who stood trying to stay warm while waiting for the fire department to finish up. At home a worried wife was waiting, on the verge of climbing the walls, along with three small sleeping children of which the oldest had passed out from excitement in front of the TV several hours ago but without having been the least bit worried.

  He himself felt strangely absent, and when his wife told him that his best friend and closest colleague Lars Martin Johansson must have called ten times during the afternoon and evening, he only nodded and pulled the telephone cord out of the jack to be on the safe side. Then he fell asleep, slept without dreaming, and woke up six hours later. He was completely clear in the head despite the strange persistent feeling that what had happened had not concerned him. The odor of burnt Bakelite was still there too. It will pass, he thought. It will pass.

  During the Second World War the English leader Winston Churchill would often maintain that “He who is forewarned is also forearmed.” During the most difficult years he had repeated this almost like an incantation, in Parliament, in his cabinet, and in public speeches to his severely tormented population: “He who is forewarned is forearmed.” And in hindsight, considering how it all actually ended despite the initial miserable odds, this must have been true for him in any event, and for a sufficient number of his countrymen. But this time, in Sweden, it did not apply, for when something did happen it seemed to have come as a total surprise, despite the fact that the warnings had been arriving thick and fast for several years.

  II

  The first government official who found out what was going on was not the minister of justice—which it should have been—but the prime minister. It turned out that way owing to the simple workings of human nature.

  As soon as the dispatcher on duty at the police command center was sure this was serious and not just another false alarm, he pulled out the list of procedures that applies in such situations from the folder on his desk. The rest was routine. First he called the head of the homicide squad, who was his immediate superior at the police department in Stockholm. The homicide chief answered on the first ring, hemmed and hawed a few times, and asked the dispatcher to get back to him as soon as he knew anything more. Then the dispatcher called the contact person at the secret police who, in accordance with instructions, phoned the assistant undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice who was responsible for the practical aspects of the ministry’s and the government
’s contacts with the secret police.

  There was a busy signal at the assistant undersecretary’s office, and while waiting for the call to go through—because the seconds were ticking by painfully slowly, and so that he could at least have something better to do if the bastard on the other end of the line was to continue gabbing for all eternity—he moved the beeping receiver to his left hand and with his free right hand used his other telephone to dial the direct number to the prime minister’s undersecretary. The undersecretary answered at once and was informed in less than a minute. And just as the secret police officer put down the receiver he heard the previously occupied assistant undersecretary shouting “hello” in his left ear, and what happened after that was completely in accordance with instructions.

  As stated, this departure from procedure was never discovered, much less pointed out. It lacked any significance whatsoever for either Swedish or German contemporary history, and the officer from the secret police had not thought much about the matter himself. On some occasion he mentioned it, as a small detail in a good story in the company of trustworthy colleagues, after a nice dinner along with the second cognac and the coffee. But it had never been more than that.

  The prime minister and his undersecretary were involved from the beginning; the minister of justice would take the conviction that he had been “the first to find out” with him to the grave. While the afternoon of the embassy takeover gradually passed into evening and then night, a growing troop of members of the government, high-ranking police officers, and officials in the government offices gathered at the prime minister’s office, none of them particularly happy. Life felt heavy and unjust, for this event did not directly concern them and the Sweden that they, in established democratic order, had been given to lead.

  First there was the murder of the Yugoslavian ambassador, involving Croatian extremists and separatists, and a dead Serbian ambassador, and in any event, Sweden had no responsibility for all that. Then other Croatian terrorists hijacked an SAS plane to free the murderers of the ambassador, and in the process risked the lives of almost a hundred ordinary Swedes. The plane finally landed in Spain, where the hijackers immediately gave up and turned themselves over to the police. And now: a half-dozen crazy students calling themselves the Socialist Patients’ Collective, who wanted to overthrow German society by force and who chose to do so in Stockholm, of all places. This was not just, and it was un-Swedish with a vengeance. The fact that in between all that a domestic piece of talent from the traditional criminal lumpen proletariat took hostages in a bank on Norrmalmstorg was something they would have to put up with.

  First there had been discussions in the prime minister’s office about how the hostages could be rescued without further unnecessary bloodshed. There was more than enough as it was. Ideas were in short supply, but at last the prime minister, who had been a reserve officer in the cavalry, suggested that the police should storm the building. But the idea was immediately dismissed by a unanimous top police command. Swedish police lacked both equipment and training for such missions, despite the fact that, as the national commissioner so alertly took the opportunity to point out, funds for such operations had been requested by the department on several occasions and for several years running, but no money had been granted. Now they had neither equipment nor training, despite apparent willingness.

  “It would be a pure suicide mission,” the national commissioner clarified in his rasping dialect, and an even greater gloom settled over those assembled.

  When the West German government then gave their reply categorically rejecting the terrorists’ demands, the mood quickly reached a low ebb, and at last, for lack of anything better and because something had to be done, it was agreed that a little tear gas should be fired into the building. While this effort was being planned, however, things resolved themselves of their own accord when the top floor of the embassy building was literally blown into the air. It was unclear why, but that was a question for later that others could answer. Because for the most part those inside the building seemed to have pulled through, there were more important questions on the night’s agenda.

  At that point they moved over to the government’s conference room, and the discussions quickly took a new direction. Namely, how they could be rid of the five surviving terrorists as quickly as possible. The very thought of having them in Swedish prisons, with the prospect of constant attempts to free them through new airplane hijackings, kidnappings, and all the other outrages their comrades might conceivably think up, was just about the worst thing that could be imagined.

  “They’ve got to go. There’s nothing to discuss,” as one of the older cabinet ministers summarized the matter even before the deliberations had begun.

  The only one who raised objections was the advisory cabinet minister in the Ministry of Justice, the government’s own judicial expert, and as it happened the same man who had written the terrorist legislation that would be the basis for the immediate deportation. According to him the problem was not complicated at all. If the government’s intention was to use the terrorist law, then there was no legal basis for deporting the five terrorists, but because this was no time for judicial subtleties a united government, including the legal consultant, decided to immediately deport the five using that very same Swedish terrorist law that actually applied only to foreign citizens and therefore was not even an issue for the Ministry of Justice.

  “You can’t have the statute book under your arm in these kinds of situations,” as the cabinet member responsible for “foreigner issues” so elegantly summarized the decision. She was a woman besides, the youngest in the government, the youngest cabinet member ever, and as decisive as male colleagues twice her age.

  For her, Friday the twenty-fifth of April was a day filled with practical tasks from early dawn until long past midnight. First she had to try to get a little order in the jurisprudence, to the extent possible, and then clear up a thousand and one practical details in connection with the deportation itself. The Germans, for example, had promised to send over an airplane to bring home their countrymen, but the fact that it never showed up was of minor importance. From the start the Swedish authorities had decided that a Swedish plane would be on standby at Arlanda, fueled and ready, with an eager, rested crew and accompanying nursing personnel.

  The medical condition of the deportees was a problem. None of them was in wonderful shape, but for three of them at least the doctors had given the go-ahead, and it was even simpler with the fourth one. He was so severely burned that if the bed he was lying on had been moved a few feet he might as well have been killed on the spot. It would be necessary to wait a week until his condition was stable enough for him to survive the trip home to West Germany. Letting him die en route was not an option. That was the sort of thing that made people want to take revenge. But after a week he was allowed to go home, and once home he had the good taste to spend another week in a German hospital before he died.

  It was the fifth one, the female participant in the occupation of the embassy, who represented the major problem, for on her case the opinions among the medical experts were sharply divided. The first doctor asked saw no problem at all in proceeding with her deportation, but when the cabinet minister responsible, a large number of police officers, and the necessary nursing personnel went to the hospital to pick her up, the senior physician responsible started to dig in his heels. Finally he played his trump card and simply refused to discharge her. If she were to be taken away, someone else would have to take the medical responsibility, and he wanted an affidavit from the cabinet minister attesting that he was opposed to the transport.

  If it was his patient’s well-being he had in mind, this was not very smart of the doctor—it suggested a significant underestimation of his opponent, for in a situation like this you do not win any victories if you go around with a statute book under your arm. Without changing her expression, the cabinet minister took out a pen and wrote out the order for deportation. Then
she wrote a brief affidavit for the doctor, and she and her entourage took his patient to Arlanda. Immediately after three a.m. on Saturday the government transport plane finally lifted off toward its secret destination in West Germany with its cargo of four German terrorists.

  What had happened was definitely not a cheerful story, but in the general misery the government could be happy that public opinion was united behind them. In addition, for once the goodwill was shared by the populace and the media. The man on the street was, to put it simply, furious. The whole thing was very un-Swedish, and at the same time it was typical for the Germans to foist their problems on their peaceful neighbors—something the Germans unfortunately had been in the habit of doing for far too long. In brief, you got the terrorism you deserved, and besides, everyone who had been abroad in winter knew that the Germans always push ahead in the lift lines at the most popular ski resorts, despite the fact that these were in Austria and Switzerland.

  In the media various editorial writers and so-called experts were feasting on the shortcomings of the German government. Not only had the German government avoided taking any responsibility; it even had the gall to shift the responsibility onto the Swedish government, the Swedish police, and the Swedish people. In addition, to be on the safe side they were so completely and utterly incompetent that the only reasonable conclusion was that the German embassy in some mysterious way must have self-ignited, and that the terrorists’ contribution to the matter was to be seen more as an effect than a cause.

  Considering what had happened, the media reception was almost phenomenal, with only one exception, found of course in the major conservative morning newspaper. On its editorial page, “the nest for generally retarded and inverted opportunists,” as the prime minister used to summarize things when he was in one of his extravagant moods, a brief contribution appeared in which the writer had the gall to compare the German terrorists’ occupation of the embassy with the blowing up of the English strikebreaker vessel Amalthea in Malmö Harbor by Anton Nilson and his comrades sixty-seven years earlier.