Germany probes security failures 50 years after Munich Olympics massacre

The independent investigation comes as part of an agreement reached last year with victims' families, five decades after the assault in which 11 Israelis lost their lives.

Berlin's Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said it was "shameful" that "agonising questions" had for so long been left unanswered.

For too many years, there has been a lack of understanding of the events, a failure to reappraise what happened, an absence of transparency about the attacks and a refusal to accept responsibility for them," she said in a statement.

Berlin is "keenly aware of this, and it has informed our actions, especially when it comes to supporting the family members and finally conducting a thorough reappraisal of what happened," the minister said.

In a press release, the German Interior Ministry said that a commission of "eight internationally renowned scholars" from German, Israeli, British and American universities will carry out the research. Their work will be supported by the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History.

'Forgiveness'

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier last September asked for "forgiveness" from families of victims after a long, bitter fight for appropriate compensation and for Berlin to accept that security failures led to the massacre.

On 5 September 1972, eight gunmen of the Palestinian militant group Black September stormed into the Israeli team's accommodation at the Olympic village, shooting dead two athletes and taking nine Israelis hostage.

West German police responded with a bungled rescue operation in which all nine hostages were killed, along with five of the eight hostage-takers and a police officer.

Despite the devastation, the International Olympic Committee announced on the morning of September 6 that the Games would go ahead as planned.

Steinmeier summarised the episode as a triple failing: in the preparation of the Games and the security organisation; the mishandling of events on 5 and 6 September; and, after the assassinations, the silence, the suppression and the forgetting.

After families threatened to boycott last year's 50th anniversary ceremonies, a deal was finally agreed for Berlin to provide 28 million euros in compensation and appoint an investigating commission.

Ankie Spitzer, whose husband André Spitzer was killed in the hostage-taking, said in the ministry statement that the bereaved families were "very pleased that our request to open the archives and establish a commission of historians has been honoured".

The findings of the eight-member panel are to be made public.

(with wires)