Citation

Sundberg J. Terrorism 1981; 5(3): 197-232.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981)

DOI

10.1080/10576108108435512

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Operation Leo, an aborted terrorist action that was to take place in Stockholm in the summer of 1977, had as its goal the kidnapping of former Ministerof the Interior Anna‐Greta Leijon, who was then to be traded for the release of a number of terrorists in captivity in West Germany. The plan misfired and the perpetrators were brought to book. The present article takes as its point of departure a discussion about the Baader‐Meinhof group and Wolfgang Huber's Socialist Patients' Collective in Heidelberg. The background of Nor‐bert Kroecher, the instigator of Operation Leo, his stay in Sweden, and the creation of the Kroecher group in Stockholm, including such members as Armando Carillo, Alan Hunter, and Manfred Adomeit, together with their plan of action, are brought out partly through quoted testimony at the trial. Much light is thrown on the inner workings of such a conspiratorial group, and questions are raised as to why such foreign refugees with criminal records were not picked up immediately butremained undetected for a long time, why quite a few middle‐class Swedish intellectuals, especially young women, were attracted to terrorist doctrines, and to what extent the fault lay with the destruction of the social infrastructure and the lack of family control in a society characterized by a general leftist atmosphere. All these and other factors, it seems, combined to make Sweden into a "giant Socialist Patients' Collective," in which German and other terrorists were operating with impunity.

Language: en