From German Counterterrorism Hans Juergen Wischnewski was Germany's top anti-terrorist official during a wave of Red Army Faction kidnappings, assassinations and bombings in the 1970s. Among other operations, in 1977 he directed the rescue of the passengers of a Lufthansa flight held captive by Palestinian terrorists at the Mogadishu airport in Somalia. We asked him to recall the experiences of those years and their lessons for America and Japan, where homegrown terrorism has erupted for the first time. BONN - Terrorism is on the increase worldwide. This year alone, we witnessed its dramatic climaxes in Oklahoma and Tokyo.
Terrorism can have widely varying motivations.
There is rightist terrorism, combined with anti-semitism, racism and xenophobia. There is leftist terrorism, whose main objective is to achieve a total transformation of society There is religious terrorism, which is not limited to Islam but can also be found among Christians and Jews, as well as among active believers of other religions. There is also state terrorism, where a dictatorial government employs terrorist means to maintain itself in power or to block any developments internationally that it perceives are against its aims and interests. Finally, there are governments which lend active support to terrorism in other countries. Terrorism has been and is still present in Germany.