1974 French Embassy attack in The Hague
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The 1974 French Embassy attack in The Hague was an attack and siege on the French Embassy in
The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...
in the
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
starting on Friday 13 September 1974. Three members of the
Japanese Red Army The was a militant communist organization active from 1971 to 2001. It was designated a terrorist organization by Japan and the United States. The JRA was founded by Fusako Shigenobu and Tsuyoshi Okudaira in February 1971 and was most active i ...
(JRA) stormed the embassy, allegedly on the orders of their leader
Fusako Shigenobu is a Japanese communist activist and founder of the disbanded militant group Japanese Red Army (JRA).< ...
, demanding the release of their member Yatsuka Furuya. The ambassador and ten other people were taken hostage. The siege and negotiations lasted five days, resulting in the release of Furuya, the embassy hostages and a safe flight out of the Netherlands for the terrorists. During the incident, a café in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
was bombed which was linked to the embassy crisis.


Background

The
Japanese Red Army The was a militant communist organization active from 1971 to 2001. It was designated a terrorist organization by Japan and the United States. The JRA was founded by Fusako Shigenobu and Tsuyoshi Okudaira in February 1971 and was most active i ...
was a communist terrorist organisation dedicated to eliminating the Japanese government and monarchy and launching a worldwide revolution. The organisation carried out many attacks and assassinations in the 1970s, including the
Lod Airport massacre The Lod Airport massacre"They were responsible for the Lod Airport massacre in Israel in 1972, which was committed on behalf of the PFLP." Jeffrey D. Simon, ''The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism'', Indiana University Press ...
in
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the ...
three years earlier.


Embassy attack

Three
Japanese Red Army The was a militant communist organization active from 1971 to 2001. It was designated a terrorist organization by Japan and the United States. The JRA was founded by Fusako Shigenobu and Tsuyoshi Okudaira in February 1971 and was most active i ...
members stormed the embassy on Friday 13 September 1974. A few minutes later, three Dutch policemen entered the embassy and were immediately caught under fire. Two policemen were seriously injured due to the gunfire and the other opened fire. One of them was policewoman Hanke Remmerswaal, who was shot in the back, puncturing a lung. The Red Army demanded the release of their member (also known as Yatsuka Furuya), one million dollars, as well as the use of a French aeroplane. Due to the position of the building in a central part of the city (Smidsplein), the Dutch authorities, in consultation with the Government of France, chose to negotiate for the release of the hostages instead of mounting a rescue operation. The two female hostages were released after two days.


Paris café attack

On 15 September, a grenade was thrown into the ''Le Publicis Drugstore'' café in the
Saint-Germain-des-Prés Saint-Germain-des-Prés () is one of the four administrative quarters of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France, located around the church of the former Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Its official borders are the River Seine on the no ...
district in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
. The attack killed two people and wounded 34, including two children who were maimed. The attack was linked to the still ongoing siege and hostage-taking at the French embassy in The Hague. The
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( ar, الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين, translit=al-Jabhah al-Sha`biyyah li-Taḥrīr Filasṭīn, PFLP) is a secular Palestinian Marxist–Leninist and revolutionary so ...
(PFLP) claimed responsibility of the attack, and in 1996 a former member of the group, Carlos the Jackal, was charged with the attack. The hostage-taking by the PFLP-allied JRA in The Hague had also been orchestrated by Carlos according to prosecutors. The Paris attack was said to have finally pressured the French government into releasing the jailed JRA member. Carlos personally claimed responsibility for the attack in a 1979 interview with an Arab magazine, which he later denied.


End of siege

After lengthy negotiations, around 10:00 am on Tuesday 17 September, the France agreed, in return for the release of the hostages, to free Furuya from a French prison, US$300,000, in addition to a flight out of the Netherlands in an
Air France Air France (; formally ''Société Air France, S.A.''), stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the flag carrier of France headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. It is a subsidiary of the Air France–KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global a ...
-owned Boeing 707, which would later take off with the four terrorists and a Dutch-English crew piloted by Pim Sierks from
Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
's
Schiphol Airport Amsterdam Airport Schiphol , known informally as Schiphol Airport ( nl, Luchthaven Schiphol, ), is the main international airport of the Netherlands. It is located southwest of Amsterdam, in the municipality of Haarlemmermeer in the province ...
. The plane flew the hostage-takers to Aden, South Yemen for refueling, before bringing them to Damascus, Syria. They were then forced to give up their ransom and weapons, which were then returned to the French Embassy in Damascus. According to Ambassador Jacques Senard, at least 20 shots were fired by the terrorists during the siege. Both the captives and Dutch authorities claimed that the kidnappers were highly trained; the ambassador called the group's leader a "skilled negotiator".


Aftermath

The Government of France said on 18 September that its secret service would organise an international effort against the Japanese Red Army. The Dutch Budget Day (
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
: ''
Prinsjesdag Prinsjesdag ( en, Little Prince's Day) is the day on which the reigning Monarchy of the Netherlands, monarch of the Netherlands addresses a joint session of the States General of the Netherlands, States-General of the Netherlands (consisting o ...
''), where the reigning monarch addresses Parliament and proposes the next year's budget, was scheduled for 17 September. The traditional ride in the Golden Coach did not happen. Instead
Queen Juliana Juliana (; Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina; 30 April 1909 – 20 March 2004) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1948 until her abdication in 1980. Juliana was the only child of Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. S ...
was driven in a car, along a heavily protected route. The JRA's next major activity would be the August 1975 AIA building hostage crisis in
Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
.


Trial of attackers

Kazue Yoshimura was arrested by Peruvian DIRCOTE agents in
Lima Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín Rivers, in the desert zone of the central coastal part of ...
on 25 May 1996 after alleged contacts with members of the Maoist
Shining Path The Shining Path ( es, Sendero Luminoso), officially the Communist Party of Peru (, abbr. PCP), is a communist guerrilla group in Peru following Marxism–Leninism–Maoism and Gonzalo Thought. Academics often refer to the group as the Commun ...
(SP) insurgency. The trace to her arrest was established after the 1995
Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
capture of Yukiko Ekita with a false Peruvian passport. She had supposedly intended on traveling to the
coca Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. Coca is known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. The plant is grown as a cash crop in the Argentine Northwest, Bolivia, ...
-growing Huallaga Valley, the last stronghold of the diminished Peruvian Maoist insurgency as well as a drug-trafficking haven. According to the Peruvian ''
Caretas ''Caretas'' (Masks) is a weekly newsmagazine published in Lima, Peru, renowned for its investigative journalism. History ''Caretas'' was founded in October 1950 by Doris Gibson and Francisco Igartua. In the mid-1950s, Gibson's son, Enrique Z ...
'' magazine, she was aiming on helping establish a JRA presence in South America and may have even established contacts with Jun Nishikawa, another JRA operative later captured in Bolivia. Yoshimura was later deported to Japan by the government of
Alberto Fujimori Alberto Kenya Fujimori Inomoto ( or ; born 28 July 1938) is a Peruvian politician, professor and former engineer who was President of Peru from 28 July 1990 until 22 November 2000. Frequently described as a dictator, * * * * * * he remains a ...
(a
Japanese Peruvian Japanese Peruvians ( es, peruano-japonés or ''nipo-peruano''; ja, 日系ペルー人, ''Nikkei Perūjin'') are Peruvian citizens of Japanese origin or ancestry. Peru has the second largest ethnic Japanese population in South America after B ...
), who stated that there was no proof against her despite the overwhelming intelligence data. The move was allegedly the result of pressure from Japanese authorities. In December 1997, Yoshimura was sentenced to two and half years imprisonment for passport forgery. Two of the three members who allegedly attacked the embassy,
Haruo Wakō was a member of the armed militant group the Japanese Red Army (JRA). He attended Keio University, but dropped out in 1970. Later he worked for a time as an assistant for Kōji Wakamatsu's ''Wakamatsu Productions'', a producer of leftist movies ...
and Nishikawa were detained and extradited to Japan, where they were later imprisoned. The other member, Junzō Okudaira, is still at large. Fusaku Shigenobu was captured by the Japanese police on 8 November 2000, after many years on the run. She was found guilty of her involvement in the attack and sentenced in 2006 to 20 years in prison. Carlos the Jackal faced trial for the Paris café attack in 2017, and was given a third life sentence. During the trial he claimed that "no one in the Palestinian resistance has executed more people than I have," and claimed responsibility for a total of about 80 killings. It is thought he bombed the café to put more pressure on the French government into the JRA's demands in Netherlands. Carlos had already been imprisoned since 1996 for other international terrorist activities.


In popular culture

This event was featured in the 2010 biopic miniseries '' Carlos'' about the terrorist Carlos the Jackal. In the film '' The Assignment'' the attack is fictionalized as one Carlos launched specifically to kill a CIA agent who he recognized incidentally while at the cafe there, disconnected from the French Embassy attack.


Gallery

Gijzeling Franse ambassade 15.jpg, Japanese officials walking with Dutch detectives Japanse terroristen gijzelen Franse ambassadeur en 10 anderen in Franse ambassad, Bestanddeelnr 927-4515.jpg, Members of the Japanese embassy attempting to contact the terrorists Japanse terroristen gijzelen Franse ambassadeur en 10 anderen in Franse ambassad, Bestanddeelnr 927-4509.jpg, Two vans of the
Royal Marechaussee The Royal Netherlands Marechaussee ( nl, Koninklijke Marechaussee, abbreviated to KMar) is the national gendarmerie force of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, performing military and civilian police duties. It is also one of the two national pol ...
Gijzelingsdrama Den Haag , verhoogde paraatheid op Schip rijen pantserwagens en , Bestanddeelnr 927-4570.jpg, Dutch military vehicles on high alert at
Schiphol Amsterdam Airport Schiphol , known informally as Schiphol Airport ( nl, Luchthaven Schiphol, ), is the main international airport of the Netherlands. It is located southwest of Amsterdam, in the municipality of Haarlemmermeer in the province ...
airport after the siege's end Gijzeling Franse ambassade 36.jpg,
Queen Juliana Juliana (; Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina; 30 April 1909 – 20 March 2004) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1948 until her abdication in 1980. Juliana was the only child of Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. S ...
decorating one of the injured police agents


Footnotes


References

# http://www.geschiedenis24.nl/andere-tijden/afleveringen/2003-2004/Gijzeling-Franse-ambassade.html # http://www.boekenwebsite.nl/geschiedenis/de-gijzeling # http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20001202a6.html {{DEFAULTSORT:French Embassy attack in The Hague Explosions in 1974 September 1974 events in Europe 1974 crimes in the Netherlands History of South Holland Hostage taking in the Netherlands Attacks on diplomatic missions of France French Embassy attack Attacks on diplomatic missions in the Netherlands Conflicts in 1974 Battles and conflicts without fatalities 20th century in The Hague Japanese Red Army Palestinian terrorist incidents in Europe Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Terrorist incidents in the Netherlands in the 1970s France–Netherlands relations