A former Palestine Liberation Organization guerrilla who was one of the masterminds of the 1972 terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed said he “regrets nothing” about the incident.
Speaking to Germany’s Spiegel TV in an interview released Saturday, Mohammed Oudeh, better known as Abu Daoud, said it was up to Palestinians to “fight as long as it takes Israel to recognize our rights.”
“I regret nothing,” of the Munich attacks, he said, according to a transcript of the interview released ahead of its broadcast. “You can only dream that I would apologize.”
Spiegel TV said they spoke with the 68-year-old, who lives in Damascus, Syria, last week in Cairo.
Daoud was a member of a shadowy Palestinian terrorist group called Black September that took Israeli athletes hostage at the 1972 Olympic Games. Eleven Israelis and a German police officer were killed during a nearly two-day standoff.
'Nobody checked us'
Daoud told Spiegel TV he brought the weapons involved in the attack by train from Frankfurt to Munich in various suitcases, then stored them in lockers before distributing them to his team when they arrived. He had previously scouted the Olympic village, and said he had no problem reaching inner areas.
“Nobody checked us,” he said.
Daoud reiterated a statement in his 1999 autobiography that the intent was never to kill the Israeli athletes.
He was also quoted as saying the 11 members of the Black September group killed by Israeli agents through the 1970s were the wrong people.
“The people who were shot all had nothing to do with Munich,” he said.
German police issued an arrest warrant for Daoud in 1999 after he revealed in his book his role in the attack.
