A Scent of Munich and 1980

In the fall of 1980....there was to be a German federal election....5 Oct 1980.

Around ten days prior to the election, a simple pipe-bomb went off at the Munich Oktoberfest.  Thirteen people dead, and 211 injured.

The culprit?  There was a fairly quick rush to judgement that a right-wing extremist and geologist student....Gundolf Kohler....was the one single guy who built the bomb and accidentally set it off while placing it....thus dying among the thirteen.

 The cops were put under intense pressure to solve this and wrap it up....prior to the election.  Kohler had a record....he was considered a gun-nut....and he was a loner.  If you were looking for a perfect candidate for the bomb-maker....this guy was it.

It was a tidy clean-up and helped to ensure a stable view of society.....for the election.

The only problem?  Well....at the scene were dead people and wounded folks.....along with this one hand (separated from the body).  The cops assumed the mangled hand belonged to Kohler.  Oddly, when they did fingerprint reviews from this hand and the car that Kohler drove to the fest....the prints aren't on the car.  But the prints do show up in his apartment.    This should have driven the cops to ask a lot more questions.  The leadership of the state didn't want more questions....they just wanted closure.

It is this odd aspect of a case closed.  Most German cops from this episode didn't like the speed involved or the quick closing of the case.  The fact that Kohler was noted as the one and only person involved in this?  As time went by....fewer and fewer believed the story told by the original government report.

So I come to this week's BVB bombing (Tuesday night) and how this Iraqi guy was quickly identified and the case is pursued on him.  So far, there's a fair number of cops who seem to question how this fits together.

Oh, they agree....he has some attachment to ISIS and the arrest for that connection is legit.  But the bomb attempt on the soccer team bus?  There is no clear connection.

We are four weeks away from the NRW state election.  There's this impression that the leadership in the state are acting a bit like it was 1980 and Munich.  They need the bombing episode to be cleaned up quickly and a culprit to be identified.  The Iraqi guy has some connection to ISIS, so fine.  But was he the bomber?  There's just not any real evidence yet.