Germany/Switzerland-Death of Rainer Barschel 1987 in Geneva

[Magda Hassan]

Mossad accused over 1987 death of German politician

DEREK SCALLY in Berlin
ISRAEL’S MOSSAD secret service has been accused of involvement in the unsolved death of German politician Uwe Barschel in October 1987.
Mr Barschel’s lifeless body was found in the bath of a Geneva hotel just weeks after the state governor was forced out of office in disgrace.
A postmortem revealed a lethal dose of barbiturates in his system, leading to the assumption that the politician had killed himself.
However, one of the toxicologists involved in the case says he has new evidence suggesting that Mr Barschel was force-fed a sophisticated cocktail of drugs.
“The chemical results indicate a murder,” said Dr Hans Brandenberger to Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
“Due to the complexity of the murder scene, a professional team that was at work, not a single person.”
The claim has revived claims that Mr Barschel was murdered by Mossad because he threatened to go public about an alleged illegal sale to Iran by Israel of military aircraft, a deal reportedly funnelled through Germany.
Mr Barschel was the influential governor of Germany’s northernmost state, Schleswig-Holstein when he was forced from office at the end of September 1987.
The Christian Democrat (CDU) politician had denied involvement in a dirt-digging campaign against his Social Democrat (SPD) rival during a recent state election, but had to go when incriminating evidence emerged of his involvement.
On October 11th, 1987, his body was found in a bath of icy water in room 317 of Geneva’s “Beau-Rivage” hotel. Swiss police ruled the death a suicide, but doubts about that version events soon began to emerge.
The crime scene was contaminated, fingerprints and photographs of the hotel room were useless and Basler Zeitung daily, citing “very reliable information”, claimed that Bonn had told Swiss authorities “it would be in everyone’s interest if the case could be classified as suicide”.
Twenty-three years on, doubts persist about the official version of events.
German newspapers suggest Mr Barschel was a bit-player in the Iran-Contra scandal and that, at the time he died, Geneva was crawling with agents from several secret services.
A fresh investigation was opened into the case in June 1998 but was put on ice nine years later when no definitive evidence to prove either the murder or suicide theories.
Dr Brandenberger’s new evidence is based on fresh computer analysis of the 1987 autopsy results.
His attention was caught by a fast-working sleeping agent, Noludar, found barely metabolised in Mr Barschle’s system.
“It borders on certain that Barschle was given Noludar shortly before his death through the rectum,” said Dr Brandenberger, at which point the politician was already unconscious.
The toxicologist’s claim are backed up in a report by rogue Mossad agent Viktor Ostrovsky. In a 1994 book, he claimed that Mr Barschle was given drugged wine before a Mossad team pumped a cocktail of drugs via a tube into this stomach.
To boost the drugs’ effect, he wrote, a hypnotic suppository was administered. The German toxicologist said he was unaware of the 1994 book until approached by Welt am Sonntag .