THE 'SPIEGEL' CASE SIR,—I have long followed Miss Sarah Gainham's
regular articles on the German political scene wills interest and respect, but it was with dismay and amazement that I read the more than mild discussion of the Spiegel case, which was published in the
Spectator of November 9. 1 feel that your readers ought to be informed of one or two facts which were either not available at the time or which, for reasons best known to Miss Gainham, were not mentioned. Firstly, we read : 'Needless to repeat, Defence Minister Strauss and his Ministry had nothing to do with the arrest of Rudolf Augstein and his Spiced team.... We now know that not only was the Ministry of Defence involved, but that the person directly re- sponsible for the arrest of Conrad Ahlers (the author who wrote the original article which caused the case to start) was none other than the Defence Minister himself. The German military attachd in Madrid, von Oster, has disclosed in the meantime that the Minister in person spoke to him on the telephone, urging him to support the Spanish authorities in their arrest of Ahlers.
The official warrant for the arrest of the author of the offending article arrived seven hours after the arrest had taken place. The warrant was signed 'Interpol,' although 'Interpol' is not allowed to inter- vene in cases of a political nature. Furthermore, the Bundeskriminalamt, acting on this warrant, had been expressly informed by the Federal Attorney's office that an arrest of Ahlers In Spain would be illegal. Nevertheless, Ahlers was arrested. It does not need a great deal of imagination to deduce who was behind all this.
One's initial disquiet and shock at the unconstitu- tional and undemocratic behaviour displayed in Bonn over the past weeks has nevertheless been allayed to some extent by the immediate protest t
which has conic and continued from the public. The press and radio have mustered their not incon- siderable powers behind this. There seems hope that this effort may not be unsuccessful. And this is the only positive thing one can say about a very sorry Landgral Wilhelmstra,se 15, Frankfurt (Main)
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