Fischer Testifies in Behalf of Radical

It wasn’t supposed to be Joschka Fischer on trial here Tuesday, but the German foreign minister summoned as a witness for an old friend charged with murder and terrorism appeared to acquit himself well under questioning over a radical past that has come back to haunt him.

Unabashed by the glaring media spotlight on his youthful indiscretions, Fischer told the Hesse state criminal court what he could remember of his involvement with Hans-Joachim Klein in the anti-establishment protests and idealistic pursuit of social justice of the 1970s.

Prosecutors’ questioning of Fischer was so keenly focused on his own involvement in the Spontis group of leftists and the Putzgruppe, or “cleanup squad,” of street fighters that sought to counter police brutality, that Judge Heinrich Gehrke had to twice remind them that Klein was the defendant.

Fischer repeatedly asserted that he never supported movements espousing armed struggle and denied that Klein’s drift into terrorism was apparent to his friends at the time.

“There was not a single situation in which we used weapons,” Fischer told the court. He added that, on the topic of violence as a political tool, “my position was completely clear: that this could only lead to self-destruction and repression--the opposite of what we were seeking.”

Klein is charged with three counts of murder and three of attempted murder in the 1975 terrorist raid on a Vienna meeting of oil ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Klein has admitted that he took part in the attack but denies any hand in the killings.

Fischer could have gotten out of testifying by virtue of his government position, but he instead testified for 2 1/2 hours--the maximum amount of time he had set aside. Afterward, the foreign minister approached his old friend. The two, who had not seen each other in a quarter of a century, shook hands and exchanged words and warm, nostalgic smiles that seemed to bridge the chasm of time and different roads taken.

More than 100 police officers were on hand to provide security for Fischer, who at one time might have been more inclined to punch them. Klein, his erstwhile comrade, sat hunched and expressionless throughout the proceedings while Fischer, relaxed and elegantly attired in a gray suit, silk tie and signature half-moon glasses, cooperated with authorities.

Gehrke grilled the 52-year-old chief diplomat and vice chancellor on Klein’s attitudes toward weapons and violence, and he wondered aloud how a comrade from what began as a peace movement evolved into an accomplice of the notorious “Carlos the Jackal.”

Fischer denied that he ever witnessed violence committed by Klein, although the minister said he and his leftist companions endlessly debated the morality of armed struggle and the limits of peaceful protest.

“I cannot recall any discussion where there was talk of intentionally hurting or killing somebody,” Fischer said.

He told the court that Klein seemed more “action-oriented” than many of the others in the loose-knit Sponti group, so named for its spontaneous and myriad protests, but that he was regarded more as a hard-knocks “loser” than as a potential terrorist.

Fischer said he was shocked to learn of his friend’s involvement in the OPEC raid, which ended with three hostages dead and Klein shot in the stomach. Klein spent the next 23 years as a fugitive, taking shelter in Arab terrorist circles and eventually settling in rural France, where he was discovered and arrested in 1998.

Fischer, amid unrelenting attempts by prosecutors to get him to admit to having encouraged firebomb attacks to defend squatters, occasionally showed impatience, describing the questions as “absurd” and the allegations of his providing a violent role model for Klein as “rubbish.”

“When am I going to hear that Daniel Cohn-Bendit and I were planning World War III?” a clearly irritated Fischer remarked after being asked whether the Frankfurt apartment he shared with a fellow radical in the early 1970s had been a hangout for terrorists.

That retort and others elicited laughter, even from the judges and prosecutors, as Fischer, renowned for his witty banter, was asked to provide obscure details of conversations held as long as 30 years ago.

Cohn-Bendit, now a member of the European Parliament from the environmentalist Greens of France, as well as Carlos, who is imprisoned in France and whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, have already been called to testify in the case against Klein. But Fischer’s summons has by far been the most attention-grabbing moment of the 3-month-old trial. A verdict is expected imminently.

Fischer has been under a media microscope for two weeks since the publication of 1973 press photos showing him among a clutch of Spontis roughing up a policeman at a demonstration against the eviction of squatters from a Frankfurt apartment house. He has since apologized for his behavior, both to the policeman and the country. He has denied being involved in the 1976 firebombing of a police car in which another officer was severely burned.

Fischer was among those questioned at the time, and he denied then and now ever having thrown incendiary devices. Prosecutors say he is not a suspect.

Despite the publicity over his wilder years, Fischer remains the country’s most admired public figure, probably a reflection of the transformations many others his age have gone through.

In his testimony, Fischer said his pacifism changed after riot police beat him and his first wife, Edeltraud, at a demonstration in April 1968.

“As I was lying on the ground, my outlook changed. I asked myself, ‘Why must you always allow yourself to be beaten?’ ” he recalled. “We reached a point where we realized we had to defend ourselves.”