By Tom Degun at the Main Press Centre on the Olympic Park in London

Jacques Rogge_London_2012_July_21_2012July 21 - International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge has confirmed there will not be a minute's silence at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony in honour of the 11 Israeli athletes killed during the 1972 Munich Olympics.


With the 40th anniversary of the tragedy approaching, there have been calls to remember the event at London 2012, but the IOC President said the 1972 murder victims will be honoured in a more appropriate way in Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany, where the killings took place.

"We are going to pay homage to the athletes as we always have done in the past and will do in the future," Rogge said at a press conference here.

"We plan to assist the meeting organised by the National Olympic Committee of Israel and there will be various IOC delegates present on the exact day of the killings, on 5 September, at the military airport of Fürstenfeldbruck where the killings actually happened.

"That is what we are going to do."

"We feel that we are able to give a very strong homage and remembrance for the athletes within the sphere of the National Olympic Committee.

Furstenfeldbruck airbase_July_21_Fürstenfeldbruck air base, scene of a battle between German police and Palestinian terrorists

"We feel that the Opening Ceremony is an atmosphere that is not fit to remember such a tragic incident."

The Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists from the Black September group after they scaled the wall of the Athletes' Village in Munich and took some of the 30-strong delegation hostage.

After a stand-off at Fürstenfeldbruck, with the terrorist group demanding the release of 234 Palestinians from Israeli jails, 11 Israelis and a German policeman were murdered in one of the most shocking moments in Olympic history.

Rogge's comments today come after Israel's IOC member Alex Gilady told insidethegames earlier this year that he did not want to see the tragedy remembered at the Olympics.

"The unity of the Olympic movement is the most important one, and therefore, I am not supporting such a move," said Gilady, who in 1972 was a journalist covering the Olympics.

Munich 72_police_deal_with_crowds_July_21Police address crowds at the Munich Games following the murder of Israeli team members

"Such an act may harm the unity of the Olympics.

"Besides, it was time for the Israeli Olympic Committee and Family to ask for such an act in 1976 in Montreal – that was the perfect time and they have not asked.

"Four years later in Moscow the Israeli Olympic Committee boycotted the Games and even in Los Angeles in 1984, with a very strong Jewish involvement in the Organising Committee and in the town, they have not asked."

"The Israeli Olympic Committee is hosting a memorial which the President of the IOC is attending, and many delegates from many other National Olympic Committees are present and, on this occasion, we are commemorating a minute's silence."

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