Word: rumanians
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Down Schlösslistrasse in Bern, one of the quietest streets in the quietest capital in Europe, walked four masked men. The time was 10 p.m. Coming to No. 5, which is the Rumanian legation, they climbed quietly over a high iron-grille fence. Looming above them in the snowy darkness was the big building presided over by Chargé d'Affaires Emeric Stoffel. To their left, in a chalet-type house near the street, was the chancellery, where lived Aurel Setu, nominally the chauffeur, but actually the secret police boss of the Communist legation. The leader...
...Swiss Watch. Still the cops did not try to storm the big house. As one of the masked men tried to leave the legation, he was captured by the cops. He said that he and his accomplices were all members of a Rumanian anti-Communist resistance movement and had planned the action (and others in Stockholm and Copenhagen) as a protest against the imprisonment of prominent resistance leaders in Rumania. His companions were armed with automatic weapons and grenades, he warned, and would resist "until death" because they knew that there was no escape for them. Searching him, cops found...
Chargé d'Affaires Stoffel, in an official diplomatic note to the Swiss Foreign Office, demanded immediate arrest and extradition of the attackers, accused the Swiss police of "inexcusable tardiness." He said that the attack was an "act of banditry without precedent" by "a gang of Rumanian fascists and other criminal elements, armed with automatic weapons, axes and knives," who had "pillaged" the legation. The Swiss simply replied that they did not like the tone of the Rumanians' protest...
Next morning Kessi saw the Rumanians again. The leader told Kessi that the Communists had killed his father in Rumania and that he had taken an oath "to fight to the end." Kessi suggested that a Catholic priest. Father Beat Lorenz Seckinger, could absolve the Rumanian leader of his oath. That afternoon he returned with Father Seckinger. After the leader spent ten minutes with the priest, the Rumanians, still masked, left the legation under police guard. They had held the legation for 42 hours...
While Radio Bucharest filled the air with Chargés that the four were paid U.S. agents, the Swiss were more inclined to accept the judgment of Father Seckinger: "They are all ardent Rumanian patriots and idealists. They hoped by their action to draw attention to the awful state of "affairs in Rumania under the Communist regime." Booking the four men for manslaughter (not murder), Swiss police did not make their names public, and categorically refused to hand them over to the Communists for extradition to Rumania. Whether the audacious young masked men had found anything incriminating, Swiss police would...