Freedom on the airwaves
For more than 75 years, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has provided independent news to audiences living under censorship, dictatorship and war. From communist Europe to today’s Russia, Iran and Afghanistan, its mission has remained remarkably consistent, even as the broadcaster now faces one of the greatest challenges in its own history.
September 10, 2026 -
Piotr Leszczyński
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History and MemoryIssue 5 2026Magazine
On February 21st 1981, a winter Saturday evening, a van pulled up outside the Radio Free Europe building in Munich. A man carrying a large parcel exited the vehicle. The suspicious parcel was left next to the building. Moments later, a massive explosion set off by a 20-kilogram bomb rocked the area around the Englischer Garten park. The material damage was considerable, yet by a stroke of luck few people were in the radio building at the time and, most importantly, no one was killed. The most seriously injured was the Czechoslovak journalist Maria Puhr. The doctors who fought to save her life, fortunately succeeded.
Who was behind the attack on Radio Free Europe? One of the leads only came to light after 1989, following the end of East Germany and the release of the Stasi files. It then emerged that the attack on the broadcaster’s headquarters had been carried out on the orders of the Romanian political police, the Securitate, and that the operation was to be carried out by a group led by the most notorious assassin in the terrorist world of the 1970s and 1980s – Carlos, the “Jackal”. His real name was Carlos Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan by birth and the son of a self-declared communist. Wanted by many western countries, the Jackal hid from law enforcement in Syria, Algeria and various countries of the Soviet bloc. He collaborated with the Eastern Bloc countries and was a guest under the protection of the ruling communists in both East Berlin and Warsaw. Working for their intelligence services, he carried out contract killings. Today, he is serving a life sentence in France for his numerous murders and attacks.
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