Terrorism: With the Precision of Clockwork

Swiss commandos lift the bizarre siege of a Polish embassy

When it finally came, the commando-style operation unfolded in typically Swiss fashion: it was a combination of precise timing and meticulous efficiency. At 10:42 a.m. last Thursday, a young, casually dressed, plainclothes policeman placed an aluminum container on the front doorstep of a three-story, white stucco mansion that houses the Polish embassy in the leafy Kirchenfeld neighborhood of Bern. Then the policeman climbed back into his beige Volkswagen and slowly drove away. Seconds later, the parcel exploded. The front door of the residence dissolved in smoke and flame, and some 20 members of an elite Bern police squad burst into the building. About eight explosions were heard as tear gas and percussion grenades detonated. Within twelve minutes, the gray-uniformed, red-helmeted troopers had captured and handcuffed four Polish terrorists and were speeding them down the city’s normally placid Elfenstrasse.

So ended a bizarre siege in which members of a selfstyled, inchoate Polish “Independent Home Army” imposed a brief reign of terror upon their country’s local embassy. The terrorists’ demands during the siege were hopelessly quixotic: curtailment of martial law in Poland, the release of all political prisoners held in that beleaguered country, and “an end to repression of the Polish “people” by the military regime run by General Wojciech Jaruzelski.

The assault marked the first time that Communist Poland’s martial-law troubles have spilled over into violent protest in the West. It gave Poland’s government an opportunity to vilify the suspended Solidarity trade union, only a week after a harsh crackdown on tens of thousands of Polish demonstrators took to the streets to commemorate the second anniversary of Solidarity’s founding. Said Warsaw’s Communist Party daily Trybuna Ludu: “Solidarity extremists are now switching, as proved by numerous facts, to terrorist activities.” But the terrorist action was energetically denounced by spokesmen for Solidarity, who disclaimed any connection with the gunmen who had taken over the Bern embassy. Said a union representative: “This is a provocation. Someone is out to discredit us.”

The long Swiss ordeal began when four men carrying suitcases walked calmly into the Polish embassy. Once inside the building, they suddenly pulled out submachine guns that were hidden in their luggage. Trapping a total of 14 people inside the embassy, the militants declared that they were carrying 55 lbs. of dynamite, which they threatened to explode within 48 hours unless their demands were met. Vowed the leader of the band, who identified himself as Colonel Wysocki (after a 19th century Polish national hero): “We are prepared to die.”

Wysocki and his accomplices, however, were unprepared for the practical details of their attack. Within 24 hours, they released one of their hostages, a pregnant embassy employee. They also decided to allow the Bern police to deliver packages of food, medicine and newspapers to the embassy’s doorstep, and agreed to talk to a Polish-born Dominican priest, Josef Bochenski, 80. After intensive negotiations, which were led by Swiss Justice Minister Kurt Furgler, the gunmen agreed to a 48-hour extension of their deadline and to the release of five more hostages. Some 30 hours after the initial occupation, the gunmen discovered a Polish military attaché, Zygmunt Dobruszewski, hiding in an embassy annex. Wysocki and his friends also failed entirely to detect the presence of Polish Attaché Jozef Matusiak, who was concealed in an attic. Eventually, Matusiak managed to crawl through a window onto the shingled embassy roof, and Swiss commandos standing by with ladders hauled him to safety.

Finally, the terrorists turned their political demands into a simple plea for safe conduct to Albania or China, and a $1.4 million ransom. The Swiss government immediately rejected that idea. Warsaw offered to send in its own antiterrorist squad to help the Bern police, but the Swiss firmly refused. Then the Swiss police made their move.

Any thoughts that the Bern siege might have had political implications were laid to rest when Colonel Wysocki was finally identified by authorities. He turned out to be Florian Kruszyk, 42, a onetime member of the Polish state security apparatus who spent ten months in Austrian jails in 1968-69, after he was caught spying on Polish refugees. Thereafter, he served time for robbery. Kruszyk and his three associates, it turned out, had never belonged to Solidarity.

After the Swiss rescue operation, Polish officials conceded that there were no links between the terrorists and any groups in Poland. Despite that admission, the fact was that the Bern terrorists had given the military government a boost, rather than the opposite. Throughout the siege, the Jaruzelski regime was able to inveigh even more against the trade-union movement that the Communist leadership in Poland is striving to crush.

— By George Russell.

Reported by Richard Hornik/Warsaw and Robert Kroon/Bem