Grenzschutzgruppe 9 der Bundespolizei (Border Protection Group 9 of the Federal Police), commonly abbreviated GSG 9 is a German counter-terrorism and special operations unit.
Publicly known missions:
- October 17–18, 1977: Lufthansa Flight 181 was hijacked by four Palestinian terrorists demanding the release of Red Army Faction members. GSG 9 officers stormed the aircraft on the ground in Mogadishu, Somalia, with help from the Somali Army and British SAS and freed all 86 hostages, killing three terrorists and capturing the last one.
- 1982: Arrest of RAF terrorists Mohnhaupt and Schulz
- June 27, 1993: Arrest of RAF terrorists Birgit Hogefeld and Wolfgang Grams in Bad Kleinen. The theory that Wolfgang Grams was executed in revenge for the death of GSG 9 operative Michael Newrzella during the mission (Grams had shot and killed Newrzella when Newrzella tried to tackle him) was discredited by the official investigation which found that Grams committed suicide.
- 1993: Ending of the hijacking of a KLM flight from Tunis to Amsterdam, redirected to Düsseldorf, without firing a single shot.
- 1994: Ended a hostage situation in the Kassel Penitentiary.
- 1994: Involved in the search for the kidnappers Albert and Polak.
- 1998: Arrest of a man trying to extort money from the German railway company Deutsche Bahn.
- 1999: Arrest of Metin Kaplan in Cologne.
- 1999: Arrest of two suspected members of the Rote Zellen (Red Cells) in Berlin.
- 1999: Involved in ending the hostage situation in the central bank in Aachen.
- 2000: Advised the Philippines in relation to a hostage situation.
- 2001: Arrested two spies in Heidelberg.
- 2001: Assisted in the liberation of four German tourists in Egypt.
- 2002: Arrested a number of terrorists related to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
- 2003: Protection of the four members of the German Technisches Hilfswerk (THW - the governmental disaster relief organization of Germany) in Baghdad, Iraq. The THW's mission was to repair the water distribution network.
- 2004: GSG 9 is responsible for protecting German embassy property and personnel, including the embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. On April 7, 2004 two members were attacked and killed near Fallujah while in a convoy travelling from Amman, Jordan to Baghdad. The men, aged 25 and 38, were travelling in a car at the rear of the convoy, and therefore received most of the enemy fire after passing the ambush. The men were shot after their armoured Mitsubishi Pajero/Shogun was hit and stopped by RPGs. In a later statement, the attackers apologized for mistaking the German convoy for an American convoy. One of the bodies is still missing.
- 2007: Three suspected terrorists were seized on Tuesday,
- 4 September 2007 for planning huge bomb attacks on targets in Germany. The bombs they were planning to make would have had more explosive power than those used in the Madrid and London terror attacks. They wanted to build a bomb in southern Germany capable of killing as many as possible. Fritz Gelowicz, 29, Adem Yilmaz, 29 and Daniel Schneider, 22, were charged with membership in a terrorist organization, making preparations for a crime involving explosives and, in Schneider's case, attempted murder.
- 2009: The GSG 9 were on the verge of boarding a German freighter, the MV Hansa Stavanger, which had been hijacked by Somali pirates. The case of the Hansa Stavanger, at this time off the Somali coast seemed sufficiently symbolic to justify another potentially successful rescue operation, though on a much larger scale. More than 200 GSG 9, equipped with helicopters, speedboats and advanced weapons, had been secretly brought, via Kenya, to a location 80 kilometres (50 mi) from the German freighter. The United States Navy helicopter carrier USS Boxer (LHD-4) was lent to the Germans to act as their flagship, and a screen of German Navy warships flanked the Boxer. The ships had been patrolling near the Hansa Stavanger for days, waiting at a distance to evade detection on the pirates' radar screens. But the operation was called off before the rescue effort could begin. US National Security Advisor James L. Jones had called the Chancellery to cancel the operation. The US government, worried that the operation could turn into a suicide mission, was sending the USS Boxer back to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, where the German forces were to disembark. Officials at the German Federal Police headquarters in Potsdam, outside Berlin, concerned about the potential for a bloodbath, had also spoken out against the operation.
- 2012: GSG 9 was involved in a raid on the Hanover Hells Angel chapter leader Frank Hanebuth's house, as part of a crackdown on the group. During the raid, they knocked down the wooden gate and rappelled from a helicopter onto his residence. They are also reported to have shot a dog on the premises belonging to Hanebuth.
Note: The majority of this unit's missions are confidential and public information is not available. Since its inception, GSG 9 has participated in over 1500 missions, yet reportedly fired shots only on five occasions (official count, prior to the 2003 Iraq War). These occasions were Mogadishu in 1977, Bad Kleinen in 1993, Aachen in 1999 and two more missions where firearms were used to shoot dogs of the persons being arrested.
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