Bonn Hotel Bombing
The Bonn Hotel Bombing was a terror attack committed on June 23rd, 1956, by a radical Gaelic supremacist cell of the GaelWind political party in Faneria. It left several dozen dead and over a hundred injured, and instigated a large number of police raids and trials of known and suspected members of GaelWind.
| Bonn Hotel Bombing | ||||
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| Part of Lean Years (Faneria) | ||||
| Date | June 23rd-24th, 1956 | |||
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| Goals | Political Terrorism, Ethnic Supremacy | |||
| Methods | Terror Attacks, Arrests, Executions | |||
| Resulted in | GaelWind political party banned, mass arrests and crackdown, counterterror operations reform in Faneria | |||
| Parties to the civil conflict | ||||
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| Casualties and losses | ||||
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| Casualties | ||||
| Buildings destroyed | Bonn Hotel (partially) | |||
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Background
The attack targeted the Hotel Bonn, a prominent business owned and run by a mixed Yonderine-Gothic immigrant family situated in the port city of Sethsport. Sethsport hosts a relatively large foreign population, including a large Aenglo minority and several Coscivian and Gothic communities, as well as numerous localities with Gaelic subcultural elements. Hotel Bonn was a notable tourist destination made in traditional Yonderine fashion on the city's popular tourist area on the southern bank of the Deir River, and holds a prominent and visible spot for several miles from the north bank as well as a notable portion of the south bank due to the relatively few stories of the buildings immediately surrounding it (the average being 2-3 stories and the Hotel featuring eight floors).
The modern incarnation of GaelWind was originally a fringe political party called the Steel Stars formed after the end of the Second Great War, focusing on renewing claims to the former _____ and _____ regions in Fiannria as well as numerous minor revanchist claims across several other nations. The Steel Stars were a veterans' group originally, and made ties with several other similarly-minded organizations, including tacit ties to the more mainstream group GaelWind - a much older pan-Gaelic nationalist group that had fizzled out of popularity after Faneria's Central Republican Party formally adopted pan-Gaelicism as a platform element and absorbed most of its membership in 1924. Over the course of the late '40s and early '50s, the party was increasingly overtaken by Gaelic supremacists as the revanchists splintered off into the Starkist faction of the Republican Party, eventually leading to the Steel Stars merging with GaelWind, the Old Falcons, the New Ordered Faneria Society, and several other groups of varying repute to maintain a sense of coherency. GaelWind was easily the oldest of these, and the Stars adopted the name, forcing out the remnants of the original GaelWind leadership and undergoing an internal power struggle that saw the party council taken over by militant, virulent ethnic supremacists. After losing one of the its three seats in the national legislature (and keeping the remaining two partly through intimidation tactics), the party was in danger of losing its status as a recognized political party and coming under increasing surveillance by state security agencies.
An individual cell based in Srathlann planned and supplied the attack independently of the central GWP office, intending to use the attack as cover for the killing of the Bonn family, who were large figures in the city's immigrant community and thus prominent members of the immigrant community on the national level; in addition, the attack was intended to discourage foreign immigration and tourism and to terrorize the non-Gaelic community in Sethsport and surrounding Srathlann. This was not in and of itself unusual, as GaelWind members frequently harassed and assaulted lone Aenglos and others on the infrequent occasions they had the opportunity, but the relative smallness of GaelWind meant they could not effectively cow most minority communities, even in smaller cities. Furthermore, an uptick in gun ownership and a steady increase in policing effectiveness had made random violence far less safe to conduct and get away with than in the chaotic 1940s, whereas the Hotel Bonn had a strict no-weapons policy as a result of drug smuggling issues during the Second Great War. National intelligence circles were aware of the increasing militancy of GaelWind, but were both hesitant to rough up a formally recognized, albeit not well-respected, political party and unable to justify more than supporting police against individual actors.
Due to poor communication and planning, as well as the personalities of the involved actors, the Southern Sethsport GaelWind cell organized a team of three operatives and an extraction team of two more, which ballooned to a team of eighteen personnel which rapidly lost cohesion and began planning operations independently. Two additional persons planned to join of their own accord but did not show up on the night of the attack; one changed his mind, and the other was hit and hospitalized when he ran a red light en route.
Attack
Local police were alerted several days prior to the attack by the Counterterrorism Division of the national government, and planned along with GERB resources to raid the cell's headquarters and prevent the attack the day prior. The raid went off perfectly, with seven armed insurgents and another sixteen accomplices being quietly apprehended at 8:10 PM on the night of the 23rd. One of the prisoners revealed the existence of another group of three men who had been absent at the time of the raid, and police were sent to the Hotel Bonn to intercept them, successfully doing so. The scene was cleared by 11:21; six officers remained on site at the Hotel. Believing the threat to have been cleared, the Counterterrorism Management Officer present, ________, stood down the fourty-eight GERB operatives brought in to handle the situation.
At 11:54, an hour and twenty-four minutes after the intended time of the attack, an independently operating group of nine GaelWind members entered the Hotel from a side entrance, moving through the building's east wing and planting explosives in several empty rooms. The Hotel only a token security staff, making infiltration easier as the group killed several staff members quietly and cut the local landline. The broken landline was noticed immediately, and the manager on shift, 54 year-old co-owner Frederick Bonn, went to investigate the lines outside for damage at 11:59, initially suspecting a tree he had neglected to cut had fallen.
The team of GW paramilitaries entered part of the main floor's extended, winding lobby space at 12:02 on the 24th, firing several rounds in the air and screaming at people to get on their stomachs in Fhasen. The police stationed outside responded immediately, but two were killed by gunfire from the paramilitaries immediately and the others took positions near the entrance. Two of the terrorists repulsed them with a fragmentation grenade, killing one more and wounding two of the remaining officers as the others began firing on panicking guests and visitors, many of whom were tourists who did not speak Fhasen fluently and could not understand the commands given to them. This caused chaos, and rounds hit several compliant hostages, leading several to try and rush to safety or to batter the terrorists. One terrorist suffered a concussion and another was grazed by a pistol round during a scuffle in which several hostages were killed attempting to take their weapons. Afterwards, two men went to 'clear' the west wing, while two others continued attempting to wire support columns with small explosive charges beginning in the east wing floor level.
The Sethsport PD was immediately made aware of the attack by radio, and scrambled all available units in the northern half of the city starting at 12:03, with the GERB unit present being alerted and scrambling at 12:05. The Sethsport Naval Garrison was alerted at 12:10 and dispatched an active patrol boat to the shoreline near the Hotel.
At 12:09, the terrorists herded several hostages into a corner of the lobby, their exfiltration plan being completely ruined by the rapid reaction of police. One terrorist attempted to leave the building through a back entrance and was tackled by the hotel manager, who successfully beat him unconscious prior to police arrival and took one of the terrorists' weapons, entering the building and engaging the remaining GaelWind members at 12:18. By 12:20 AM, the building was quarantined, with an increasingly large number of police attempting to restrain and contain the fleeing people cramming the local streets, most of whom were unaware of the reason behind the panic but were swept away by the crowd. Police confirmed a large number of people escaping the building through fire escapes and alternative exits. This foot and vehicle traffic restricted PD and GERB access to the site considerably, and one team of twelve GERB operatives flagged down the Navy patrol boat a half-mile down the river with a flare and boarded at 12:24.
At some point in the intervening time, Frederick Bonn began to direct evacuation efforts and encountered two members of the strike team, who were attempting to clear floors and hunt down people who had not yet fled, and ambushed them in a hallway in the west wing. He successfully injured one and killed the other, but was hit twice in the chest and crawled into a room where he bled out over several minutes. Simultaneously, the twelve GERB officers who had flagged the patrol boat clambered ashore via an old rowboat dock at the waterline and ascended the steps along the bank. After tying the previously battered and unconscious attacker's hands and feet, they breached the building at 12:42.
A short gunfight ensued, with the GERB troops killing all but one of the terrorists in the lobby at no loss to themselves. The explosives were set off by one of the terrorists in the east wing as they heard the fighting but failed to sufficiently damage the reinforced pillars, and the two attempted to flee but were shot when they tried to do so by cutting through part of the second floor of the lobby, which briefly brought them in sight of the rapidly advancing state security team due to the two-story lobby layout. The GERB team had been clearing the second floor and nearly missed the fleeing terrorists, but caught them as they attempted to exit on the ground level and fired down at them. One was killed and the other wounded; the wounded one was shot again by one of the GERB agents at range and expired. GERB cleared the building, taking the two injured and one uninjured captives into custody and sending the all-clear at 8:48 AM after the other teams arrived and conducted a full search of the premises. The site remained locked down with a presence of at least a dozen officers through to the end of the year before reconstruction was permitted.
Aftermath
At Home
The attack prompted an immediate crackdown by the _____ administration, which ordered a raid on the GaelWind Peoples' Headquarters in Teindún in which a large number of incriminating files were seized and several prominent members, including both the party's sitting representatives in the Joint Councils and the party president, were arrested. A state of martial law was maintained in Sethsport until the 26th, and the operatives of the government organization GERB launched a series of successive raids on known Gaelwind offices and members' homes, capturing upwards of six thousand weapons mostly of civilian make and use. In most cases the weapons were returned after their owners were cleared of involvement, though many of those people ended up on watchlists. In one instance, a GERB officer was killed, prompting a gunfight which saw three additional casualties accounted for as being due to paranoid gun nuts.
Public outcry was immense, and both state and private papers ran stories railing against GaelWind and calling for its dissolution as a legal party in Fhainnin politics shortly after the attack. On July 29th, the Joint Councils passed an act by a 86% margin to raise the bar for official party membership from 1% to 2.5% of the popular vote, effectively blocking the party from officially holding any seats outside of a coalition. This also made it considerably easier to prosecute GaelWind members and seize legal documents from their offices, as it removed some of the protections of the 1952 Political Persecution Prevention Act afforded to recognized parties. The nay votes were largely from independents and fringe parties seeking to maintain their own statuses rather than out of support for GaelWind, but these votes still would become a contentious topic.
Frederick Bonn was posthumously awarded a Civil Defense Medal along with two of the hostages who attempted to resist their killers; the GERB agent who executed one injured GaelWind member was formally reprimanded but not otherwise disciplined. The Bonn family was reimbursed for reconstruction as well as a seventy-five thousand Barra tax-free payout and the median estimate for lost revenue. After the attack, the immigrant community in Sethsport banded together and paid for many of the funerals required, with the remainder being partially reimbursed by the Fhainnin government in spite of its not being required to to so for foreign citizens, as many of the wounded and dead had been tourists.
Court cases went on for up to three years after the attack, with every survivor of the terror team that actually reached the Hotel being given the death penalty. The planners and members who had intended to take part but had been intercepted. including the hospitalized gunman who had been hit while driving to the meetup, were imprisoned for terms of fifty years to life depending on involvement. Several of these persons were later convicted of other crimes that had been known by the GWP central office, including politically motivated killings, which resulted in several more death sentences through 1975.