ABSTRACT
A wave of political terrorism gripped Western Europe in the 1970s, catapulting it to the top of all world regions in incidence of terrorist activity. By 1985, Western Europe had slipped to second place behind the Middle East but continued to play the unwilling host to a bewildering array of insurgent terrorist groups. 1 Although government efforts to counter terrorism appeared for a brief period to have taken their toll against such groups as the West German Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof group), the Italian Red Brigades, and the Irish Republican Army, recent events reveal an intensification and internationalization of political terrorism in Western Europe. Responsibility for the’ 1985 murder of West German industrialist Ernst Zimmermann was claimed jointly by the Red Army Faction and the French terrorist group Action Directe, and the commando group that carried out the murder called itself Patsy O’Hara, in memory of an Irish terrorist who died in a hunger strike.
