Bruno Bréguet
| Bruno Bréguet | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Bruno Bréguet May 29, 1950 Coffrane, Switzerland |
| Disappeared | November 12, 1995 (aged 45) on board the ferry Le Lato sailing from Italy to Greece |
Bruno Bréguet (born 29 May 1950 in Coffrane, Switzerland) was the first European arrested and condemned for pro-Palestinian terrorist activities. He was an associate of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal". He disappeared in 1995.
In 1970 Bréguet, then 19 years old, travelled to Lebanon to join the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). A few weeks later, he was arrested on 23 June 1970 in Israel, while carrying two kilograms of explosives with the purpose of dynamiting harbour installations in Haifa. His friend François Genoud asked his son-in-law, lawyer Maurice Cruchon, to defend Bréguet.
Bréguet, who denied any ties with the PFLP, was sentenced in 1971 to 15 years imprisonment, but was pardoned in 1977 as a result of public advocacy by an international committee of supporters that included Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Noam Chomsky and Alberto Moravia—as well as Genoud. He was expelled from Israel on 24 July 1977.
In the late 1970s, Bréguet may have established links with militants of Prima Linea. He wrote an account of his captivity in Israel that was published in 1980 in Milan under the title La scuola dell'odio (The School of Hate).
Richard Cummings writes that Bréguet joined Carlos' group in 1980 and took part in its 1981 bombing of Radio Free Europe headquarters in Munich as his first operation. In August 1996 German prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Bréguet in connection with that attack.
In February 1982 Bréguet and Carlos' wife Magdalena Kopp (fresh from a failed 18 January 1982 mission to destroy the Superphénix nuclear power plant in France) were arrested in an underground parking garage in Paris. They were carrying in the trunk of their vehicle two bottles of gas, two kilos of explosives linked to a timer set to go off at ten-thirty, and two grenades. During the arrest, Bréguet attempted to kill the police with a gun that misfired.
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