The 1982 seizure of the Polish embassy in

Bern german: Berner(in)french: Bernois(e) it, bernese , neighboring_municipalities = Bremgarten bei Bern, Frauenkappelen, Ittigen, Kirchlindach, Köniz, Mühleberg, Muri bei Bern, Neuenegg, Ostermundigen, Wohlen bei Bern, Zollikofen , website ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

was a politically and financially motivated

hostage situation A hostage is a person seized by an abductor in order to compel another party, one which places a high value on the liberty, well-being and safety of the person seized, such as a relative, employer, law enforcement or government to act, or refra ...

. The embassy was seized by a group of four Polish exiles, led by a former employee of the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB) security service, Florian Kruszyk. After seizing the embassy and taking 14 hostages, the group made several broad political demands including the abolition of martial law in Poland. They also requested several million Swiss francs, threatening to destroy the embassy with explosives if their demands were not met. The group's financial demands, and Kruszyk's previous conviction for an armed robbery involving hostage-taking, led some experts to cast doubt on the group's motives being primarily political. After intensive negotiations, a Swiss elite Stern anti-terror squad raided the embassy, freeing the hostages without a shot being fired. The raid took place around 36 hours after the siege had begun.

Events

On September 6, 1982, a group of four Polish exiles, armed with four

Remington 870 The Remington Model 870 is a pump-action shotgun manufactured by Remington Arms Company, LLC. It is widely used by the public for shooting sports, hunting and self-defense, as well as by law enforcement and military organizations worldwide. De ...

shotguns, multiple knives and gas masks, stormed the Polish embassy in Bern in Switzerland and took 14 embassy workers hostage.The four gunmen who seized the Polish Embassy and..., UPI Archives, September 10, 1982
/ref> The group was headed by Florian Kruszyk, a former employee of the

Służba Bezpieczeństwa The Ministry of Public Security ( pl, Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego), commonly known as UB or later SB, was the secret police, intelligence and counter-espionage agency operating in the Polish People's Republic. From 1945 to 1954 it w ...

(SB) security service. The group tossed a message out of the embassy window which demanded the abolition of martial law in Poland, the release of all

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...

s, the dismantling of what they described as prison camps, and the end of "all repression of the Polish people".POLISH REBELS SEIZE EMBASSY IN BERN, The New York Times, September 7, 1982
/ref> They threatened to hand over confidential documents to Swiss authorities that allegedly detailed secret senders and receivers, photos of military facilities in Switzerland, plans, lists of secret agents in Germany and France, and lists of hidden money. The group also threatened to blow up the embassy building should their demands not be met within 48 hours. The four gunmen self-identified as members of the "Insurgent Home Army" ('), which is a group designated as a terrorist organization by Poland that was believed to also be responsible for a deadly attack on , a member of the

Citizens' Militia A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...

, on February 18, 1982. Negotiations, headed by the then Bundesrat

Kurt Furgler Kurt Furgler (24 June 1924 – 23 July 2008) was a Swiss politician and member of the Swiss Federal Council (1972–1986). He was elected to the Federal Council of Switzerland on 8 December 1971 and handed over office on 31 December 1986. He wa ...

and also aided by Dominican

Józef Maria Bocheński Józef Maria Bocheński or Innocentius Bochenski (Czuszów, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, 30 August 1902 – 8 February 1995, Fribourg, Switzerland) was a Polish Dominican, logician and philosopher. Biography Born on 30 August 1902 in Czu ...

, took place over the course of 35 recorded phone calls. Attempts to convince the gunmen to surrender proved unsuccessful.Die Zeit, September 10, 1982
/ref> Around 36 hours after the start of the hostage situation, one of the gunmen found a military

attaché In diplomacy, an attaché is a person who is assigned ("to be attached") to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency. Although a loanword from French, in English the word is not modified accor ...

in the embassy. The attaché had previously hidden in a secret room of the embassy. The gunmen threatened to release the intelligence found in this secret room to any nation that was interested. In the meantime, the task force had already started to make plans for processing all the highly important documents. At first, the Polish authorities intended to storm the embassy with one of their own special forces units, but this offer was blocked by Swiss authorities. However, as the situation deteriorated for the gunmen, they lowered their ransom demands to three million

Swiss francs The Swiss franc is the currency and legal tender of Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It is also legal tender in the Italian exclave of Campione d'Italia which is surrounded by Swiss territory. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) issues banknotes and the f ...

and the possibility to flee to a foreign country, preferably the

People's Republic of Albania The People's Socialist Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika Popullore Socialiste e Shqipërisë, links=no) was the Marxist–Leninist one party state that existed in Albania from 1946 to 1992 (the official name of the country was the People's R ...

or the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. On September 8 at 10:15 pm, the Federal Council convened as a whole and agreed to give the head negotiator Furgler ''

carte blanche A blank cheque in the literal sense is a cheque that has no monetary value written in, but is already signed. In the figurative sense, it is used to describe a situation in which an agreement has been made that is open-ended or vague, and therefo ...

'' to unilaterally decide whether to raid the embassy premises with special forces. On September 9, 0:30 a.m., Furgler ordered the rescue operation, codenamed "Operation Essen," to begin immediately. On September 9 at 10:39 am, a policeman in plain clothes dropped off either multiple boxes or a food basket Swiss Storm Embassy, Free Captives, The Washington Post, September 10, 1982
/ref> at the embassy doorstep, purportedly breakfast for the occupants of the house. The package actually contained a

petard A petard is a small bomb used for blowing up gates and walls when breaching fortifications. It is of French origin and dates back to the 16th century. A typical petard was a conical or rectangular metal device containing of gunpowder, with a s ...

with

tear gas Tear gas, also known as a lachrymator agent or lachrymator (), sometimes colloquially known as "mace" after the early commercial aerosol, is a chemical weapon that stimulates the nerves of the lacrimal gland in the eye to produce tears. In ad ...

and a

flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid ...

. As the policeman spotted all four hostage takers in the entrance hall, he gave a hidden signal to the rest of the special forces. Seconds later, after an initial failed detonation, the petard exploded and units of the Stern elite antiterrorist squad raided the embassy. The raid successfully concluded 12 minutes later without any shots fired or any resistance from the hostage takers. Later, police forces also rescued an attaché who was trapped in the compound during the siege and was not found by the gunmen. By the time special forces raided the premises, only five of the original 14 hostages were still held captive: a student, a diplomat who was ill, and six women had previously been released, while a diplomatic attaché had escaped through the roof. Some of the hostages would later reveal to Polish journalists that the gunmen had beaten and threatened to kill them. It was later learned that the gunmen did not possess the 55 pounds of dynamite with which they had threatened to blow up the embassy building. A

Škorpion The Škorpion vz. 61 (or Sa vz. 61 Skorpion) is a Czechoslovak machine pistol developed in 1959 by Miroslav Rybář (1924–1970) and produced under the official designation Samopal vzor 61 ("submachine gun model 1961") by the Česká zbrojovka ...

submachine gun they carried was later revealed to only be a mockup. The group leader, Kruszyk, had served a nine year sentence in Austria for the 1969 armed holdup of a Viennese jewelry shop, during which he held the jeweler's family hostage, which lead some experts to believe that the seizure had been financially rather than politically motivated.

Perpetrators

* Florian Kruszyk, 42, former officer of the SB * Marek Michalski, 20 * Miroslaw Plewinski, 23 * Krysztof Wasilewski, 33

Aftermath

The gunmen were sentenced to imprisonment on October 10, 1983, with their leader, Kruszyk, receiving six years of prison ( ''Zuchthaus'') and 15 years of

banishment Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suf ...

. The three other perpetrators were sentenced to 2.5 to three years of prison and five years of banishment.Rechtsprechung BGE 109 IV 156 S. 157
/ref> Extradition to Poland was rejected by Swiss authorities, noting that Poland was not part of a Western European agreement on the prosecution of terrorists.

Secret documents

It was revealed in 2013 that around the time that the rescue operation occurred, members of the

Federal Intelligence Service The Federal Intelligence Service (German: ; , BND) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office. The BND headquarters is located in central Berlin and is the world's largest intelligence head ...

of Switzerland violated the

Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 is an international treaty that defines a framework for diplomatic relations between independent countries. Its aim is to facilitate "the development of friendly relations" among governments ...

and illegally entered the embassy, seized diplomatic documents, brought them to the nearby federal prosecutor's office, photocopied them, and then returned them to the embassy. These documents contained reconnaissance reports about Swiss military airports, secret agents, Germany and the

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

. When Swiss authorities returned documents to the Polish military attaché, among them a dossier labeled "Nato", the attaché stated that he has never seen the documents before. The police had not taken any pictures of the secret archive or the work place of the military attaché for unknown reasons.Julian Schmidli, Martin Stoll, Balz Spörri:
Die Botschaftsakten
in:

SonntagsZeitung TX Group AG (formerly Tamedia AG) is a media company headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. Through a portfolio of daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and digital platforms, as well as own printing facilities, it is the largest media group in ...

.
archived
'' Benno Schneider, head of the task force for hostage situations (''Sonderstab Geiselnahmen'') explicitly ordered that the documents be copied and then returned (''«Ich erteilte den Auftrag, wies die Beteiligten an, die Akten zu kopieren und nachher unversehrt in die Botschaft zurückzustellen.»''). Despite consistent denial of secret seizure of the documents when talking to the press, Furgler has approved of copying the documents. An official report states that some of the documents were accidentally taken from the embassy in midst of the general disorder and heat of the moment.

Film adaptation

Polish director produced a movie based on the embassy attack in his 1984 film '.

Events

Perpetrators

Aftermath

Secret documents

Film adaptation

See also

References

Further reading