The Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung daily on Wednesday reported that the IOC would contribute $250,000 (183,000 euros) towards a planned memorial for the 1972 Olympic hostage drama sometimes referred to as the Munich Massacre.

The Süddeutsche was citing a letter it had obtained from Michael Vesper, the director general of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), to Bavaria's minister for education and culture, Ludwig Spaenle. Vesper reportedly wrote that the comparatively new, German president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, had authorized the donation.

Spaenle, who is coordinating the project, had appealed to Vesper to seek Bach's support in April. "For me, it certainly would have been good, ideally, if the IOC were to contribute," Spaenle said at the time.

Failed intervention

During the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli team headquarters on Munich's Connolystrasse. They shot two team members and took another nine hostage. The group, calling themselves Black September, demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails, and of two high-profile members of the German Red Army Faction (RAF) terror group.

A rescue attempt the day after the hostage-taking failed, all nine remaining hostages and a German police officer died.

Forty years on, relatives of the deceased appealed to the IOC to incorporate a minute's silence into the Olympic opening ceremonies at London 2012, a suggestion rejected by former IOC President Jacques Rogge, who said the opening ceremony was the wrong setting for a memorial. This prompted heavy criticism of the IOC from Israel and Germany, and might help explain the Süddeutsche's headline for its Wedensday story: "Cash from an unexpected source."

Bavarian State Premier Horst Seehofer announced plans for the memorial in the summer of 2012, to compliment two more modest tributes, one of them on Connolystrasse itself. The federal German government has pledged 350,000 euros, around one-fifth of the projected total cost, with further donations from Bavaria, Munich, and Germany's DOSB.

Details of the victims' lives are set to be the main theme of the memorial site.

msh/jm (dpa, SID)