A Big Catch in Zagreb

West Germany's radical gangsters call themselves the Red Army Faction. The Italian terrorists who kidnaped and eventually killed former Premier Aldo Moro flaunt themselves as the Red Brigades. Noting the similarity both in names and methods, many Europeans have wondered about possible links between the two organizations. Did West Germany's R. A.F., for instance, have a direct hand in Moro's murder, as many believe? Last week two new and unexpected clues to that puzzle came to light. They added up to--maybe.

Speculation about the terrorists' connections increased after Bonn announced that four of West Germany's 20 most wanted terrorists had been arrested in the Yugoslav city of Zagreb. Authorities there jailed them for entering the country illegally. The Yugoslavs identified the four with the help of the computerized, increasingly efficient West German anti-terrorist police.

Most likely, the arrests would not have been announced until extradition proceedings had been worked out, but a curious series of incidents in West Germany led to the early disclosures. The chain began with a daring escape by a terrorist from West Berlin's Moabit prison. Flashing the identification cards issued to lawyers visiting clients in Moabit, two smartly dressed young women said that they had appointments to see Till Meyer, 34, and Andreas-Thomas Vogel, 24. The two prisoners were among six terrorists on trial for the 1974 murder of West Berlin Supreme Court President Guenter von Drenkmann and the 1975 kidnaping of Peter Lorenz, at the time the Christian Democratic candidate for mayor.

As it happened, Meyer and Vogel were already conferring with their real trial lawyers. That fact apparently made no impression on the guards; the women, who did not resemble the persons pictured on their I.D. cards, were passed through two control points without a security search. Reaching a reception area, one coolly pulled a submachine gun from her bag and the other flashed a pistol as they demanded the release of the two prisoners. A quick-thinking guard grabbed the pistol and pulled Vogel back into a bulletproof cell. But the "lawyers" escaped with Meyer in a Volkswagen minibus that was conspicuously parked near the prison, with three other women in it.

Four of the five were subsequently identified as members of the Second of June Movement, a Berlin offshoot of the Red Army Faction. Their caper was especially embarrassing in light of the fact that three of the women had escaped from another West Berlin jail in 1976. To offset criticism of the shoddy security at Moabit, Bonn then announced the arrests of the terrorists in Yugoslavia on May 11; the news had been kept secret because extradition negotiations were not finished.

The most notorious of the arrested terrorists was Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 28, a onetime journalism student who is a suspect in the murders of both Dresdner Bank Chairman Jurgen Ponto last July and of kidnaped Industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer last October. Peter Boock, 26, and Sieglinde Hofmann, 33, are also suspects in the killings. Rolf Clemens Wagner, 33, was on the wanted list not only for participating in the Ponto and Schleyer atrocities, but also for the 1977 ambush murder of West German Prosecutor Siegfried Buback.

The arrests particularly intrigued Italian police who are investigating Moro's murder. For one thing, early press reports from Bonn said that among the documents seized with the four were coded messages about an Italian "Alter Mann " or old man. The initials could mean Aldo Moro.

Mohnhaupt's arrest triggered memories of an incident in Milan, shortly after Moro's kidnaping. Among motorists stopped by police roadblocks was a 30-year-old Milanese leftist who immediately tried to swallow a piece of notepaper. Police retrieved a segment of the note; it was written in German and signed "Brigitte." The swallower insisted that he was simply a messenger, and that the note was about the "Russell tribunal" (a radical political colloquium in Frankfurt, named for British Lord Bertrand Russell, that discussed West German civil rights violations). He was released, but the curiosity lingered on. Could the Zagreb Brigitte also be the Milanese Brigitte?

Whether or not there was any connection with Moro, the arrest of the four was a hopeful sign. For one thing, it showed increased police efficiency in tracking down terrorists. At almost the same time, in another demonstration of cooperation, French security guards at Paris' Orly airport picked up Stefan Wisniewski, 25, another of the most wanted 20. Wisniewski, about to board a flight to Yugoslavia, was stopped when a French inspector recognized the alias on his false passport because of information supplied by Bonn.

Wisniewski was speedily handed over to West German officials. The Zagreb case did not work quite so smoothly. Yugoslav authorities indicated that they would turn over the four West German terrorists. But they also made clear that in return, Belgrade wanted action on longstanding extradition requests involving "Yugoslav citizens who had committed political terrorism against Yugoslavia." Specifically, they wanted eight Croatian nationalists who have sought political refuge in West Germany. Although the vast majority of the 20,000 or so Croatian emigres in the Federal Republic are politically inactive, there have been incidents in which Yugoslav diplomats were murdered, wounded or harassed by extremists demanding independence for Croatia.

One of the men believed to be on Belgrade's list was Marko Krpan, 26, who was sentenced by a West German court to 10 1/2 years in prison for shooting Yugoslav Duesseldorf Vice Consul Vladimir Topic. But some of the "political terrorists" are considered by Bonn to be political refugees; among them is Nikola Milivevis, who was granted asylum in West Germany since his only "crime" appeared to be that he headed the Catholic Croatian Workers Movement, which had no known ties to extremism.

Under a 1975 West German-Yugoslav extradition treaty, 81 people have been exchanged. Political prisoners, however, fall into a shady area. Except for crimes against human life, such as murder, acts considered to be politically motivated are not extraditable offenses. That leaves Bonn in a quandary. Turning over political prisoners would be improper. But not turning over prisoners that Belgrade wants could delay or possibly prevent the return of the R. A.F. four.

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