In the 1970s, Europe became home to many terrorist and subversive groups, a development that came about in response to the extra-parliamentary leftist and antiwar movements that formed at the end of the 1960s. Although the movement in Switzerland was not as strong as in Italy or Germany, it inspired a number of groups to take up arms as a form of protest against “the system.” European terrorist organizations not only operated within the boundaries of their nation-states, but also collaborated with groups from other countries. Drawing from a common pool of ideological inspiration, the collaborators operated at different levels of sophistication, whether through the direct exchange of weapons and materials or the planning of coordinated operations. As such, this transnational interplay between like-minded extremist groups and radical left-wing organizations (as well as the individuals who supported them) can be seen as forming a wider “network of terror.”
The article mainly focuses on the inception and evolution of the AKO (Anarchistische Kampforganisation), a group of young left-wing radicals from Zurich. Their story is inextricably linked to that of Petra Krause, a well-known terrorist with multiple connections throughout Europe who joined their group. Their shared narrative will inform an exploration of the group's position and function within the European transnational terrorist network. Attention will be paid to how the group came to be defined by its anarchist affiliations, the keen self-perception of its members, and the level of organizational change after Krause's involvement. It addresses the issue of the problematic difference between anarchist and Marxist-Leninist (or Maoist) violence in Europe by using the example of the AKO to relate the anarchist tradition to the European framework of the New Left. The article also examines the position and perception of Switzerland among European leftists and how the case of AKO and Petra Krause reflected a wider mobility among terrorist groups across Europe. In evaluating the extent of the AKO's connections, a number of related questions will be asked: What was the nature of their relations with other extremist groups? Were they established because of a common ideological basis or because they served a specific purpose? And why did the AKO decide to become involved in an armed struggle that crossed borders?
These issues will be filtered through the lens of transnational studies, an approach that has grown in popularity over recent years. Even though the focus is largely confined to Switzerland, the fact that the ties of this single country spread far across Europe make this topic a fitting one for transnational research, helping to frame the national agency and structure represented by its Swiss players within the context of wider German-Swiss-Italian involvement (as well as Spanish and French). Because a transnational approach to any examined phenomenon or subject should ideally move beyond traditional, national perspectives,Footnote 1 the overarching aim here is to avoid thinking of terrorist organizations and their networks in terms of national discourses.Footnote 2
Manuel Castells defines the individual “knots” of a network as integral to its internal functioning. According to this principle, once a knot is divested of its function, it must be excluded from the network, which is in turn left to reorganize itself.Footnote 3 As a working definition, the term terrorist network is used to describe the loose interconnections between more or less independently functioning units, which are established based on the notion of ideological proximity. As such, the network is not understood as a system of firm ligations between irreplaceable actors. It is not a network in a physical sense; terms such as center or periphery are not subject to geographical allocation. Similarly, the term network must be understood differently than how it is usually interpreted by transnational or sociology studies, that is, a dense system of institutional interconnectedness comprising defining relations with other subjects. The terrorist network was malleable in function, given the illegal activities of the protagonists and the absence of any institutional setup. The main theme will be analyzed according to different levels of scale. The article offers a multiscalar perspective intended to exemplify the dynamics of the network by accounting for the involvement of both it and a single group as a means of highlighting the interconnectedness of the extremist European left-wing movement.Footnote 4 The restrictive nature of the transnational movement is addressed and acknowledgment given to the fact that interconnectivity is in fact much greater within single states or homogeneous language regions. Personal acquaintances and contacts formed during student movements, for example, are easier to maintain because of barrier-free communication, shorter distances, and common cultural and historic backgrounds. Because the national angles have already been explored in some detail from both scientific and non-scientific perspectives, however, the focus here will be on the ties that reached across borders.
The key sources for this article are the testimonies of AKO members Peter Egloff, Urs Städeli, and Daniel von Arb. The confessions they were forced to make following their capture and imprisonment provide detailed descriptions of their activities, notwithstanding any circumstances that might have endangered their associates, which they neglected to disclose. Other sources, which are mostly gleaned from the Swiss Bundesarchiv (SBA) in Bern and the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (HIS) archive, comprise police reports, Krause's correspondence, and documents on international initiatives to free the political prisoners. The transnational terrorist network has been notably explored by German historian Petra Terhoeven, who deals with the effects of German terrorism in Europe along with the position of Switzerland, Krause's case, and the role of various supporting structures.Footnote 5 The incarceration of Petra Krause has also been addressed by Swiss historian Dominique Grisard, who recounts how she became a symbol following the hunger strike campaign she led from prison.Footnote 6 The role of Swiss leftist radicals was also analyzed as part of a report commissioned by the Italian Parliament, which examined the transnational perspectives of various Italian terrorist groups.Footnote 7
Switzerland's Position within the European Terrorist Network
As with other countries, the wave of protests that hit Switzerland at the end of the 1960s proved deeply divisive. The Swiss left was reduced to a state of disunion, with traditional communist and worker organizations on the one side and the autonomist movement on the other. Based mostly in Zurich, the New Left scene, which was diverse in character, included counterculture communes, Red Army Faction supporter groups and, perhaps most notably, anarchist autonomist centers.Footnote 8 Whereas in Germany students were the key fomenters of extra-parliamentary opposition and in Italy and France the resistance efforts were weighted equally among students and workers, in Switzerland the protest movement was less student-oriented. Rather, it was “the result of many groups and networks from the Left, with nonconformist and artistic milieus coming together in various types of action and participating in organizing demonstrations.”Footnote 9
For European extra-parliamentary groups, Switzerland was particularly attractive because it performed a dual function, providing refuge and serving as a place from which weapons and explosives could be distributed. One of the most active Italian extra-parliamentary groups, Potere operaio (Workers' Power), led by the renowned political philosopher Antonio Negri, concentrated its efforts on building a Swiss centrale in Zurich, which was to be a hub for its international operations. The two main figures in the Swiss network were Gérard de la Loy and Giorgio Bellini, both having legal addresses in Ticino, an Italian-speaking region of southern Switzerland.Footnote 10 Bellini managed a bookstore in Zurich called Eco Libri, which also moonlighted as a coordination center for various revolutionary operations. From there, Bellini used his contacts with German terrorists within the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion; RAF), becoming involved in the distribution of weapons.Footnote 11 With its base operating as a type of international coordinating center, the Workers' Power enrolled other smaller groups from West Germany, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and as far afield as the United States.Footnote 12 These were mostly the contacts of Negri, who was also responsible for overseeing the group's international policy. Figures of note included Gianluigi Galli, a pupil of Negri's and head of the Swiss revolutionary group Class Fight (Klassenkampf), and Karl Heinz Roth from the German group the Proletarian Front (Proletarische Front), who probably first formed an acquaintance with Negri in Milan.Footnote 13
The Workers' Power's activities in Switzerland also extended to the creation of a security network for comrades in need, those who were either unable or unwilling to continue in the armed struggle and inhibited from returning to legal life for fear of prosecution. Such was the case with Pietro Morlacchi, a leader of the Red Brigades, who sought refuge after a psychological collapse.Footnote 14 He was arrested and incarcerated together with his wife Heidi Peusch in 1975 after being captured with falsified papers. Held for several months in custody without trial, the couple soon became a symbol of the oppression of the Swiss penitentiary system and a valuable mobilizing tool for the European extra-parliamentary left.Footnote 15
The security network reportedly also made use of the property of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, an editor, billionaire, and revolutionary from Milan. Feltrinelli, a highly influential figure within the international terrorist network during the early 1970s, had an extensive list of contacts that stretched from Europe (including Italy, West Germany, France, as well as countries within the Eastern bloc such as Czechoslovakia and East Germany) to Latin America and provided financial and material support for emerging extra-parliamentary leftist groups throughout Europe. Feltrinelli was particularly influenced by the rising revolutionary movements in the third world, drawing inspiration from Message to the Tricontinental, Che Guevara's famous rallying cry urging the peoples of the world to create new power bases to consolidate the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle.Footnote 16
After the Piazza Fontana bombing in December 1969, Feltrinelli himself fled to Switzerland.Footnote 17 For the next two years, he moved throughout Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France, as well as journeying to Uruguay. During this time, he is believed to have been involved in the distribution of weapons across western Europe.Footnote 18 His pistol was used by the German-Bolivian terrorist Monika Ertl to murder the Bolivian consul Roberto Quintanilla, the man who ordered Che Guevara's execution. Feltrinelli and Ertl met in Zurich in March 1971, shortly before Quintanilla's assassination in Hamburg.Footnote 19
Given the statements of several key Italian activists, there is good reason to assume that Feltrinelli's financial assets and resources in Switzerland not only helped to create a security network but were also used to establish arms stashes. Bombs and weapons from Swiss army depots were used by revolutionaries in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Ireland. For instance, Valerio Morucci, a militant from the Workers’ Power, came to Switzerland on several occasions to obtain weapons from Feltrinelli's depots and elsewhere. During his travels between 1972 and 1975, he managed to acquire an extensive stockpile of guns, hand grenades, explosives, and ammunition from a military depot in Ponte Brolla in Ticino.Footnote 20 The same source of armaments was used by the infamous Red Brigades (Brigate rosse). According to their “historic” leader Renato Curcio, it was easier to procure weapons in Switzerland because military service was obligatory and everyone had guns at home.Footnote 21 Morucci himself joined the Red Brigades after the dissolution of the Workers’ Power in 1973.
After his arrest in Switzerland in 1979, Carlo Fioroni, another member of the Workers’ Power, disclosed that the Italians had been crossing the border for more than ten years with the purpose of obtaining weapons and falsifying documents.Footnote 22 Fioroni was a close friend of Feltrinelli. Supposedly under Feltrinelli's influence, Fioroni and Morucci founded a section of the Workers’ Power devoted to planning clandestine and executive operations. Fioroni went into exile in Switzerland following Feltrinelli's accidental death, which was caused by the misuse of his own explosives, in March 1972.Footnote 23 After his arrest in 1975, Fioroni turned pentito (repentant, stoolpigeon), agreeing to cooperate with the police, with his testimony proving to be of key importance during the subsequent trial of his former comrades.Footnote 24 With Feltrinelli's death, the Workers’ Power lost an important benefactor and a key source of finances, representing a hammer blow that eventually led to the dissolution of the group. Its key leaders soon created a new activist platform under the name of Workers’ Autonomy (Autonomia operaia) or simply, the Autonomy, which reestablished links among the Swiss network.Footnote 25
The AKO's Subversive Activities and Connections
At the beginning of the 1970s in Zurich, a small anarchist group emerged that would soon develop into an important conduit within the international terrorist network. Its core members—Peter Egloff, Urs Städeli, and Daniel von Arb—were all products of the Swiss protest movement that swept the country at the end of the 1960s. All aged just sixteen, the three schoolmates started attending demonstrations in 1970. Although the circle never went by an official title, they were usually referred to as the Anarchist Fight Organisation. Strongly influenced by the ideas of Che Guevara, Inti Peredo, and Carlos Marighella, they studied urban guerrilla tactics, engaged in shooting drills, and made Molotov cocktails.Footnote 26 Under the guidance of French left-wing activist Raimond Birgin, they adopted the ideas of anarchism, which was to become an integral part of the group's identity. According to von Arb, anarchism was the only ideology that could truly liberate the citizens of the world: “Fascism is the dictatorship of an individual or of a small group, Communism is the dictatorship of the proletariat [and] Democracy is the dictatorship of the majority.”Footnote 27 Birgin introduced them to movers within the French anarchist milieu and, after moving to Zurich, became a member of the Swiss circle for a short time. While serving among their ranks, he is alleged to have carried out a bombing attack against a prominent Swiss businessman.Footnote 28
Founded in the spring of 1971, the AKO were quick to discontinue their involvement in all demonstration activities. They instead began to conduct covert operations involving the procurement of weapons and the gathering of intelligence information about the Swiss secret service and police. By the end of the year, they had pulled off two heists, on both occasions robbing explosives from an army depot in the small Swiss town of Uitikon.
On October 9, 1972 to mark the anniversary of Che Guevara's death, the group mounted an arson attack against the Swiss company ITT in response to its “reactionist” activities in Latin America. In September 1973, they bombed the Italian consulate in Zurich in protest against the incarceration of Italian anarchist Giovanni Marini following his arrest for the murder of a member of an Italian right-wing extremist party. The AKO were of the belief that the murder of a fascist was not a punishable offense.Footnote 29
In 1973, they journeyed to Milan, where they established contacts with local leftist groups. There they met anarchist Roberto Mander, who joined them on several illegal operations.Footnote 30 Mander was directly involved in AKO's robbery of an army depot in Zufikon, Switzerland. In sharing his international contacts, he helped the group advance from a position of relative obscurity to one of central importance within the European anarchist movement. Mander was also a friend of the German-Italian activist Petra Krause, who lived in Milan at the time. He introduced her to the Zurich contingent with the aim of furthering its reach. He was eventually arrested in Naples in June 1975, charged with a kidnapping offense dated to December 1974 and with involvement in a number of operations with the Armed Proletarian Nuclei (Nuclei armati proletari).Footnote 31
The AKO also grew intent on supplying weapons to various anti-Franco anarchist groups in Spain. Having experience with intermediating transport of explosives,Footnote 32 Mander began mobilizing his Spanish contacts in Germany. In early 1974, he and Brigitte Heinrich (an associate of his who maintained close connections with the German RAF and the Movement June 2) were given weapons and explosives by the AKO to deliver to their Spanish counterparts. The consignment was duly carried on foot across the Swiss-German border from the AKO's stash in Rafz near the frontier. The assignment was to end in failure, however, with the AKO learning the news on television a month later that German police had seized their supply following the arrest of a group of RAF followers in Frankfurt and Hamburg.Footnote 33
Heinrich was also responsible for connecting the AKO with Mehdi Khanbaba-Tehrani, a notable member of the opposition movement in Iran. During his visit to AKO's headquarters in Zurich in October 1974, plans were made to assassinate the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah was long considered an enemy of the European extra-parliamentary movement. His state visit to West Berlin on June 2, 1967 sparked fatal clashes between pro-shah and student demonstrators. Emboldened by the assassination of the Spanish prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco by Basque separatists in 1973, Khanbaba-Tehrani and the AKO sought to copy their success by mounting an operation near the shah's Swiss residence. Even though the group went as far as carrying out a reconnaissance of the surrounding territory, plans were cancelled due to technical difficulties.Footnote 34
Interestingly, the members of the AKO sympathized less with the ideological and military objectives of the RAF in Germany and more with militant groups in Spain such as the Iberian Liberation Movement (Movimento Iberico de Liberacion; MIL). After the capture and incarceration of the leader of the MIL, Salvador Puig Antich, the AKO committed themselves to launching a series of attacks against Spanish targets throughout Europe, including the kidnapping of the Spanish attaché in Switzerland (whom they would exchange for the release of Antich). Although the kidnapping itself failed to materialize, the group did manage to pull off a bombing attack on the Spanish general consulate in Switzerland in January 1974.Footnote 35
In the spring of 1974, Mander traveled with Egloff to Geneva, where they met Mander's contact, a Spanish man operating under the code name Durons; a retrospective investigation later revealed him to be Ignacio Solé Sugranyes, a leading member of the MIL (currently in exile in France).Footnote 36 Egloff agreed that they would provide Spanish anarchists with explosives on the condition that the MIL would reciprocate by participating in their next operation, the robbery of a military depot in Zurich. As promised, Solé Sugranyes and four others traveled to assist in the break-in. On his orders, the stolen explosives were dispatched to Barcelona before being seized by authorities on the French-Spanish border in April 1974. This led to the arrest of several members of various anarchist cells in Barcelona and the dissolution of the MIL.Footnote 37 The AKO, however, managed to maintain regular contact with Catalan anarchists, whom they continued to supply with arms.Footnote 38
According to the testimony of von Arb, Mander introduced them to Petra Krause sometime during the spring of 1974. Krause was a German left-wing activist of Jewish origin who survived Auschwitz.Footnote 39 After the war, she married an Italian national, securing Italian citizenship herself as a result. In the 1960s, she became an active member of the emerging extra-parliamentary opposition movement. According to the American journalist Claire Sterling, Krause helped political refugees from Spain and Portugal as well as indigenous populations in Algeria, Angola, and Mozambique. Later she also cooperated closely with Feltrinelli, for whom she worked as an interpreter.Footnote 40 While dealing with left-wing activists in Europe, she went by the aliases Anna Maria Grenzi, Annabäbi, Waltraud Ehret, and Marina Fedi; upon their arrest, members of the AKO claimed not to have known her real name.Footnote 41 It was no accident that as her base Krause chose Zurich, a city frequently visited by German militants and populated by many wanted and under-the-radar Italian radicals. Swiss historian Dominique Wisler notes that, for left-wing radicals, Zurich represented a “transition point on the way from Germany to Italy.”Footnote 42 Krause also established ties with the Workers’ Power network in Switzerland through Giorgio Bellini,Footnote 43 as well as to the Autonomy.Footnote 44
After a meeting between Krause and the AKO in Zurich, a partnership was established and plans were quickly made. Krause exerted her influence by significantly increasing the amount of arms being transferred from Switzerland, while also extending the chain of supply throughout Europe and beyond, serving anarchists as well as various other terrorist organizations. In fact, such was her involvement that the group became known as “the Petra Krause group.” According to von Arb, however, she was never even a member of the group let alone its leader, a statement that seems plausible given that she was still commuting on an infrequent basis between Zurich and her residence in Milan.Footnote 45 In October 1974, she was supposedly involved in an arson attack on the Face Standard company in Milan, after which she went underground in Switzerland.Footnote 46
Krause was an important component of a transnational network of left-wing lawyers, the International Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners in Europe, or the International Defense Committee for short (International Verteidiger Kommittee; IVK). Spread across seven countries, the organization provided direct and indirect support to imprisoned terrorists, with IVK members often charged as accessories to various terrorist attacks. Krause supported extra-parliamentary groups in Italy with the help of the domestic wing of the IVK, led by the well-known lawyer and activist Sergio Spazzali. Adept at using his close links with several Italian militant groups to defend political prisoners (including members of the Red Brigades), Spazzali arrived in Switzerland to provide legal services for the accused, following an investigation into Krause's possible involvement in the arson attack on Face Standard. According to his own testimony, the purposes of his visit were to defend his client and found the Swiss branch of the IVK.Footnote 47 However, we also know that he was there to smuggle arms. He and his compatriot Giuseppe Salvati repeatedly traveled to Zurich to acquire weapons and mines for distribution among Italian extra-parliamentary organizations, with members of the AKO eventually testifying against both men.Footnote 48
Spazzali's colleague in the IVK Siegfried Haag, a lawyer from Heidelberg, became another client of the AKO. Haag served as a defense lawyer for members of the RAF in court and became radicalized following the death of one of the defendants, Holger Meins, while on hunger strike.Footnote 49 As a member of the RAF's “new generation,”Footnote 50 Haag was instrumental in plans that led to the hostage-taking of officials at the West German embassy in Stockholm in April 1975, which was part of a larger international operation that intended to target German embassies in London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Bern. For the Bern operation, Haag enlisted the services of the AKO after being introduced by Krause. Under the terms of their agreement, Haag was to be responsible for providing financial support and manpower. Egloff insisted that the hostages were only to be set free as part of a trade-off for the release of anarchists imprisoned in Spain. Ultimately, however, Haag opted to target the embassy in Sweden—supposedly based on the advice of an international criminal of Venezuelan origin, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (known as Carlos the Jackal), and his European second-in-command Michel Mourkhabal—with the kidnappers using Swiss weapons.Footnote 51 Krause introduced Mourkhabal, who was her contact in Paris, to the AKO under the code name André.Footnote 52 He worked in Paris as head of the European branch of the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).Footnote 53
Krause also had connections in Greece, a country with a very strong leftist resistance movement that mobilized in response to the coup by the military junta in 1967. The most radical elements of this opposition continued in their struggle even after the return to democracy in 1974. That same year, the AKO made contact with a man operating under the code name Alexis, who belonged to an underground organization formed during the Papadopoulos dictatorship. Alexis came to Switzerland with another Greek (whose identity is still unknown) to take part in the robbery of a Swiss army depot, carrying twenty mines back to Greece via Italy.Footnote 54 According to von Arb, the Greeks also had ties with Mourkhabal and the PFLP.Footnote 55
In addition to its roles as an international mediator and a supplier of weapons, the group continued to mount bombing attacks. In June 1974, Egloff, von Arb, and Krause bombed the Spanish embassy in Bern and, two weeks later, detonated explosives at a factory belonging to the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Bank in Zurich. The group mistook the US bank to be German because of the word Hanover in its name, attacking it in protest against penitentiary conditions in the FRG.Footnote 56 Along with Petra Krause, the group was arrested in March 1975.
The AKO as Part of the Anarchist Movement and Terrorist Network
The anarchist tradition is deeply rooted in the ideas of the European radical left. Therefore, although many terrorist groups endorsed Marxist ideology, they were also influenced by the theories of anarchism. Despite their opposition to the Italian Communist Party of the time, the Red Brigades and other Italian organizations did not reject the general concept that the Communist Party, as understood by Lenin, could play a leading role in society. They rather believed such change could be better effected under the leadership of an “armed party” (partito armato).Footnote 57 Indeed, most Italian and German terrorist groups used international communist symbols or worded their names to denote direct allegiance, for example, Nuclei Armati Proletari. Such affiliations are, however, better understood in the context of a commitment to espousing common ideological roots or identifying with the workers movement tradition as opposed to expressing sympathy toward contemporary socialist nations.Footnote 58
The USSR and its satellites had an ambiguous relationship with the New Left. While revolution in western Europe seemed to be in hand for the first time in many years, this settling had little to do with Soviet leadership.Footnote 59 For the most part, socialist countries sought to distance themselves from left-wing political violence. The Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior labeled the Red Brigades a right-wing terrorist group,Footnote 60 while the Soviet Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs variously ascribed terrorism in western Europe to anarchism, banditism, and Trotskyism, even claiming it to be China's tool against the USSR.Footnote 61 Interestingly enough, the Chinese did accuse the Soviets of pulling strings for the AKO and its transnational armament deliveries.Footnote 62 Soviet author Viktor Vitiuk traces a direct link between western European militants and the Russian anarchist Sergey Nechayev, whose radical manifesto Catechism of a Revolutionary describes how a true revolutionary, in abandoning his personal life, must devote his entire self to the revolution, regardless of the morality of his deeds.Footnote 63
The radicals of western Europe hardly counted the USSR among their allies, viewing it instead as a reactionary member-state of the new Holy Alliance of superpowers, a union that scuppered all attempts to bring about lasting change.Footnote 64 More importantly, extra-parliamentary opposition in the West was generally opposed to the state bureaucratic socialism of the Soviet Union, favoring the theories integral to anarchist ideology, namely autonomism and antiauthoritarianism. Some concepts used by left-wing terrorists, such as the “primate of praxis” or “propaganda of the deed,” have origins in the anarchist tradition.Footnote 65
One cannot simply draw a line between anarchist and nonanarchist left-wing violence in western Europe. Although some left-wing groups that considered themselves anarchist were quite separated, rising from situationism and the tradition of counter-culture (the Angry Brigade in the United Kingdom), others, such as the Movement June 2 and the AKO, were closely connected with the European terrorist network. The differences are also somewhat blurred by the common solidarity expressed among all left-wing groups and a general willingness to cooperate with one another.
Nevertheless, anarchist self-identification exhibited a number of defining features, not least this keenly shared sense of solidarity. But there was also a preference for connecting with like-minded anarchist organizations before any other group. The solidarity with the plight of Spain and its anarchists played a prominent part in the formulation of the anarchist modus operandi. For the AKO, the situation in Spain was of more pressing concern than the one in Switzerland. Emerging in response to the Second Republic, the anarchist movement was a key leftist force in Spain. Even after their defeat in the civil war, several anarchist units continued to fight on unbowed. With the execution of respected anarchist leader Francesc Sabaté Llopart in 1960, the ensuing international press coverage did much to shed light on the anarchist cause and led to Spanish embassies and company assets all over Europe being targeted by anarchist sympathizers right up until the very end of Franco's regime.Footnote 66
According to the various proclamations issued, the anarchist revolt that spread throughout Europe during the 1960s and 1970s was by and large constructed around a campaign to target property, even though in many cases civilians were wounded or lucky to survive unscathed. An important exception were the anarchist militants in Spain, who resorted to all kinds of violent methods during their fight against the Franco regime.Footnote 67 But the AKO's overarching objective was to sabotage assets, and if the reports are to be believed, their widespread bombing campaign did not result in any fatalities.
At first, the nature of the AKO's operations was to realize the group's primary anarchist objectives.Footnote 68 To that end, the AKO's main aim was to establish contact with the underground anarchist resistance in Spain (and latterly in Greece) by exploiting the group's connections with Italian anarchists such as Mander. The communiqués that announced the AKO's attacks always contained reference to the group's kinship with fighters from other anarchist movements, such as Puig Antich and Giovanni Marini. The only exception (prior to the introduction of Krause) was Heinrich, whose beliefs were more communist-oriented. She was in fact revealed to be a collaborator with the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit), the East German secret service, while serving under Klaus Croissant, a left-wing advocate and member of the IVK.Footnote 69 From the AKO perspective, the main reason for cooperating with Heinrich was to ensure the supply of armaments to Spain.
As we have seen, the cooperation established between the AKO and Krause in 1974 proved pivotal in extending the AKO's supply network, whose new variety of contacts influenced the nature of future operations. The fact that new clients such as Siegfried Haag and the RAF were not anarchists did not deter the AKO from cooperating with them on the hostage siege in Stockholm. Spazzali was closer to Italian Maoist circles than he was to anarchism,Footnote 70 whereas Mourkhabal, through his affiliations with the PFLP and “Carlos the Jackal,” was more entrenched in the international anti-imperialist terrorist scene. According to von Arb, because Krause refused to adopt the AKO's anarchist ideas, she was never considered a true member of the group, an insight which is all the more surprising given that the group was able to shift focus onto entirely new objectives. A suggestion arose from the intense press coverage attending her trial that Krause, an inspirational and attractive woman, used her seniority and sex appeal to bend the twenty-year-old anarchists to her will. Dominique Grisard reports that von Arb even proposed to her while in custody.Footnote 71 Claire Sterling contends that not only were the young men deeply impressed by the extent of Krause's international contacts, but also by the fact that she chose to entrust them with the supply of weapons. This contributed to a feeling of growing self-importance within the group.Footnote 72
The testimonies of the AKO's core members following their arrest diverged in their explanations. Egloff claimed that, although the group never sympathized with the RAF politically, they did feel morally obliged to provide assistance in the aftermath of Meins's death. He also insisted that although they were committed to offering help to political prisoners, the group never wanted to cooperate on a political level per se.Footnote 73 Although von Arb backed up this claim, however, he also admitted that fulfilling Krause's wishes was a key motivating factor.Footnote 74
Despite the youth and lack of experience of its members, the AKO's international contacts extended into Italy, Germany, Spain, and France even before the group's contact with Krause. The problem, though, was that all of their connections pre-Krause had been established in person, and therefore they were mostly randomly or accidentally formed. But when they established personal links with more connected movers like Birgin and Mander, they managed to widen their net of contacts.
Though the AKO's resources were relatively limited and the network was precarious, the group managed to supply the Catalan anarchist movement through its go-to-man, MIL leader Ignacio Solé Sugranyes. The AKO's establishment of a regular delivery route of armaments via Perpignan was a significant contribution to the distribution of illegal weapons in Europe.
From spring 1974 to spring 1975, a year during which Petra Krause cooperated closely with the circle, the AKO's contacts with foreign revolutionaries intensified greatly. Given the illegality of the organizations involved, the lack of any institutional structure, and the personal nature of the acquaintances, one could argue that all connections among terrorist groups are to a certain extent randomly formed. Considering the permeability of the network, it is all the more remarkable, therefore, that Krause was able to amass such an extensive list of contacts.
The position of the AKO within the European terrorist network was also exceptional because, in addition to mounting conventional attacks, its members committed robberies and expedited arms. The flow of deliveries was also rather one-sided. Although the AKO provided its partners with explosives, weapons, and ammunition, it did not act as an intermediary. Its role was not to tie the connective knot; instead, the AKO operated one-way supply routes that reached all sides. The group effectively represented another side of the network to the one occupied by other terrorist groups, which often acted as mediators or the recipients of arms. This unique position gave the AKO the opportunity to influence and support not only its partners, but also, other unintended recipients. In this sense, the group contributed to the shaping of the transnational terrorist network by carving out a unique and irreplaceable position. Yet, being a one-way provider as opposed to a connector also limited the impact of the group.
Krause's Campaign
Krause's trial was closely followed by members of the European extra-parliamentary opposition. Both the prosecution and the Swiss media portrayed her as an opportunist, a cynical foreign seductress who took advantage of a group of young and naive Swiss boys.Footnote 75 She was kept in isolation for two and half years altogether, a period of incarceration she recalled as torturous. As she later told the press, she left her cell only twice in the first twenty-two days of her imprisonment, and had lost 10 kilograms since her arrest in March 1975 and before starting her first hunger strike in August of the same year.Footnote 76 According to reports, her living conditions while in prison were dehumanizing. Swiss authorities were repeatedly accused of subjecting Krause to torture.
Krause chose a very clever way to fight the Swiss penitentiary system. In order to attract attention to her plight and drum up international support, she used her malnourished body as a symbolic call to arms, presenting herself as a fragile and ill woman, a subject of state oppression.Footnote 77 Following the precedence set by the RAF prisoners, she went on a hunger strike to achieve her goals, with Egloff and his colleagues doing likewise in a show of support.Footnote 78 The international campaign “Free Petra Krause” soon followed, consisting of letters and appeals for support, demonstrations, and initiatives by European leftist groups.Footnote 79
Much like the plights of Fioroni and Morlacchi, Krause's ordeal flipped the view of Switzerland as an Alpine sanctuary for militants on its head. The “Free Petra Krause” campaign painted Switzerland as racist, neo-Nazi, and reactionary, an undemocratic system that imprisoned and tortured civilians who expressed “inconvenient” views. Krause's supporters moved to stir up popular opinion in her favor by drawing attention to the suicide risk posed the prisoners in isolation.Footnote 80 Not only figuratively, but personally for Krause herself, Switzerland turned from safe haven to prison, with her body the only weapon.
Not surprisingly, Krause's case managed to mobilize a large number of sympathizers, with demonstrators taking to the streets of Milan and Rome in protest against the barbarism of Swiss prisons.Footnote 81 On July 29, 1977, the Swiss travel office in Milan was bombed in protest against Krause's incarceration, and three Swiss nationals were subsequently arrested for further destruction of property.Footnote 82 The campaign was supported by Red Aid (Rote Hilfe), an international support organization for political prisoners, the Swiss Women's Liberation Movement (Frauenbefreiungsbewegung or FBB), and the Prison Action Group.Footnote 83 Krause reported that in Auschwitz she was subjected to several medical experiments that permanently damaged her health, with activists claiming that her treatment while imprisoned in Switzerland was not dissimilar.Footnote 84 In July 1976, an Air France passenger plane en route from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by members of two terrorist groups: the German Revolutionary Cells (Revolutionäre Zellen) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Landing in Uganda, the kidnappers demanded the release of a list of political prisoners, which included Krause.Footnote 85 They were to be freed in exchange for the hostages. However, most of the hostages were eventually rescued during Operation Entebbe, a counterterrorist mission carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces.
The “Free Petra Krause” campaign was also backed by the IVK, no stranger to smuggling material in and out of prisons, organizing attacks, or mounting clandestine operations. Many of the society's members, including Croissant, Haag, and Spazzali, were imprisoned at one time or another. Their strategy of rounding up international support for prisoners on hunger strike was already well known in Germany, where the IVK had campaigned for the release of members of the RAF. The leader of the Swiss branch of the IVK, Bernard Rambert, defended Krause during her trial.
The involvement of the IVK and Red Aid is of no small importance. Although they were not terrorist organizations as such, because they operated within a transnational framework their ability to offer resources and practical support was often crucial. Although the groups that achieved their goals through violence were the central knots in the terrorist network, organizations such as the IVK occupied an important position on the periphery by mediating and providing help. The legal support and organization they lent to the publicity campaign to free Krause were hugely significant.
The outcry generated by the international solidarity campaign was even echoed among the higher chambers of Swiss politics. Members of the Swiss government were repeatedly questioned during parliamentary interpellations, especially with regard to the length and conditions of Krause's confinement.Footnote 86 Based on the elaborate medical reports of external experts describing the prisoner's deteriorating physical and mental well-being, a delegation from the Italian parliament requested that the Swiss government transfer Krause to a private medical facility in order to put an end to her abusive treatment.Footnote 87
Because she allegedly committed crimes in several European countries, extradition was requested by GermanyFootnote 88 as well as Italy.Footnote 89 In May 1977, after twenty-eight months in prison, she was extradited to Naples in Italy to begin processing, before being provisionally released due to her worsening health.Footnote 90 In 1982, she was sentenced to six years and three months in prison for transporting mines from Switzerland to Italy. Before she could be placed in jail, however, she managed to flee the country. She spent most of the 1980s in France with Spazzali under the protection of the “Mitterand doctrine.”Footnote 91 She continued to be an active member of the extra-parliamentary left and resumed her role as a mediator of contacts between European militants.Footnote 92
Conclusion
Although the left-wing terrorist attacks in Switzerland were not as deadly as those that struck Italy or Germany, the country produced a number of home-grown radicals who contributed to the militarization of the European network. International involvement in AKO terrorist attacks was limited in that it extended only to collaborations on robberies, whereas more ambitious operations, such as the kidnapping of German embassy officials in Bern, never passed the planning stage. Rather, it was the material support of Europe's most famous and efficient subversive organizations that gave the organization its unique position. Even though their participation in the terrorist acts themselves was limited, the AKO must be seen as an important part of the transnational terrorist network, with the group's distribution of weapons and explosives doing much to exacerbate political violence throughout Europe.
This interconnectedness was significant not only in terms of material supply, but also with respect to the formation of the AKO's ideology. As attested in their communiqués, they exhibited an innate self-understanding of being part of a broader international struggle. Claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks while referencing Antich or Marini, or stating solidarity with the RAF and other left-wing terrorist organizations, the AKO showed it had an intuitive appreciation for the supranational meaning of its operations. The group's involvement in the campaign to liberate Krause and foment outrage concerning the conditions in which she was imprisoned were another sign of the group solidifying its identity within a pan-European context. Promoting international solidarity among anarchists initially proved a useful tactic, especially when reaching out to key countries such as Spain, but later, after Krause joined the group, the AKO's supply network increased considerably to accommodate the needs of all kinds of leftist terrorists. An important transnational dimension can also be observed in the way international players lent their support to the campaign to free Petra Krause and the AKO, a cause that would prove a rallying call for protesters across Europe.
