The Military Information Services became infamous. They inherited it from their predecessor, the military intelligence of the People's Republic of Poland. Nothing unusual. For years, communist spies have been doing business with the world's most wanted and ruthless terrorists. Dozens of people died as a result.
In the so-called the report on the liquidation of the Military Information Services included, inter alia, information on their links with terrorist organizations. The historian Przemysław Gasztold-Seń proves that similar cooperation was developed for many years by the Directorate of the Second General Staff of the Polish Army, i.e. the predecessor of the WSI.
The first contacts with Middle Eastern armed organizations were established by the military special services as early as the 1960s, but it was not until the 1980s that they acquired the character of systematic cooperation and business activity.
Dirty Business
Military intelligence had a special relationship with the Abu Nidal Organization. He was responsible for attacks in twenty countries where 900 people were killed or injured , not only in the Middle East, but also in London and Paris.
Polish submachine gun wz. 1963 "Cancer" was eagerly used by Middle Eastern terrorists (photo:Ministry of National Defense, http://www.wp.mil.pl).
Abu Nidal was then the most wanted terrorist in the world, and yet he was safely entering and leaving Poland many times . It happened with the knowledge of the Security Service and the American intelligence, but the military services kept him safe.
What was the cooperation about? Initially, the Middle East organization gave up attacks in Poland in exchange for places and scholarships at Polish universities for its members . Above all, however, Abu Nidal's subordinates traded Polish weapons, which they sold to anyone, including other terrorists and both sides of the Iran-Iraq war.
Millions for generals?
In addition to the profits from trade, the Polish military services used these reports to obtain intelligence information as well as Western military equipment and its models. These contacts also made it possible to obtain dollar-denominated deposits in Polish banks, e.g. Saddam Hussein deposited 350 million dollars in Bank Handlowy.
The material is based on a scientific article published in the periodical "Memory and Justice".
The terrorist Abu Daud, at odds with Abu Nidal, also claimed that Polish generals personally earned millions of dollars from the described arms trade, but the credibility of this information is difficult to verify.
Polish weapons were also used in many attacks, and terrorists took a particular liking to the Rak submachine gun. He was shot from, among others in the synagogue in Vienna in 1983, when two people were killed, and in the Neveh Shalom synagogue in Istanbul on September 6, 1986, when 22 people were killed.
In 1987, under the influence of American pressure, the Minister of Foreign Trade decided to liquidate the terrorist company operating in Poland. However, this did not interrupt the contacts of military intelligence with the Abu Nidal organization. Did they stop after the change of the political system in Poland? Przemysław Gasztold-Seń does not give a clear answer to this question.
The source of the above news is:
Przemysław Gasztold-Seń, Business with terrorists. The dirty interests of the military intelligence of the Polish People's Republic with Middle Eastern terrorist organizations , "Memory and Justice. Journal of the Institute of National Remembrance ", 2014, No. 1 (23), pp. 165-216.
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