Astrid Proll, Carlos The Jackal, and the West Hampstead Bobby

This is a story about two terrorists in the 1970s and the West Hampstead policeman who was involved in both cases. 

PC Bob Brown
Born in Croydon, Bob Brown joined the Met in 1969 and was stationed at West Hampstead for 15 years. During this time, he was regularly involved in the policing of the annual Notting Hill Carnival and the experience he derived from these large scale urban policing events served him well during the Brixton Riots in 1981. 

Although local crime was the mainstay of PC Brown’s daily brief, he also took part in two cases of international terrorism while serving at West Hampstead police station. They had moved from West End Lane to a new building in Fortune Green Road in 1972.

Astrid Proll
Anna Puttick had been working for ten months at the Finchley Road Garage, when on 15 September 1978 she was arrested by Special Branch, supported by West Hampstead police officers including PC Brown. The garage at 265b Finchley Road, which has since been demolished, was close to Finchley Road and Frognal Station. 

She had been recognized as Astrid Proll when she previously went to a police station to protest about the charges against of one of the unemployed school leavers she taught at the North London Vehicle Repair Shop which was behind the garage. 

She was taken to Paddington Green police station and questioned by the anti-terrorist squad. Astrid was wanted by West Germany for being a member of the notorious Red Army Faction, popularly known as the Baader-Meinhof gang - named after Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. Strongly motivated by left wing political and anti-government beliefs, the group engaged in a series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies, and shoot-outs with police over the course of three decades. 

In August 1970 members of the group carried out a series of armed bank robberies in Berlin. Astrid was the getaway driver. German security forces carried out surveillance of a flat in Frankfurt used by the gang. On 10 February 1971 they followed Astrid and Manfred Grashof another member of the group, stopped their car and asked to see their papers. After a shoot-out they managed to escape, but Astrid was later arrested on 6 May 1971 in Hamburg. She was found guilty of armed robbery and imprisoned. Proll spent two and half years in solitary confinement. She developed circulatory problems, difficulty breathing, panic attacks and was transferred to a Black Forest sanatorium. 

On 4 February 1974 Astrid’s trial was adjourned because of her ill health, and she was granted bail. She went underground and obtained the genuine German passport of Senta Gretel Sauerbier in which her photograph was inserted. On 6 August 1974 Astrid came to England using the passport. On 22 January 1975, at the Stepney register office, she married Robin Puttick to be able to remain in the United Kingdom. She was a lesbian and the relationship was short-lived, and within a year Robin Puttick went to India. 

Astrid moved around a lot, living in squats in Holland Park, Mile End, Kilburn, Crouch End, Haringey, and Hackney.  

Astrid first worked as a park gardener with Hackney Borough Council, then as a fitter’s mate at the Lesney Matchbox toy factory in East London, and in 1976 enrolled on a government training course in car mechanics at the Poplar Skill Centre. She left the six-month course with a City and Guilds Certificate and found employment at the North London Vehicle Repair Shop supervising youngsters employed there as part of the Government Youth Opportunities Programme. She had obtained all the necessary qualifications; national insurance card, union card and driving licence in the name of Senta Puttick.

After the arrest, proceedings for her extradition to West Germany were adjourned pending the hearing of the petition concerning the validity of her marriage. 

Several groups, including punk musicians, organised support for her as ‘The Friends of Astrid Proll’ to stop her extradition. Among her sympathizers was Joe Strummer, lead singer of The Clash, who famously appeared onstage in a Rock Against Racism concert wearing a Red Army Faction and Red Brigade (the Italian left-wing terrorist organization), T-shirt. But neither he nor The Clash played any benefit gigs for Proll.

After the refusal to recognize her marriage, on 23 June 1979 she returned voluntarily to Germany to face trial. In February 1980 she was sentenced to five and a half years for armed robbery. But as she had already spent considerable time in prison in Germany and Britain she was immediately released.

The Home Secretary banned her for life from entering Britain. After a lengthy legal battle, she was allowed to return in 1988. She studied film and photography in Hamburg and subsequently worked as a picture editor for the German magazine Tempo and The Independent newspaper in London. In 1998 she published a book about the Baader-Meinhof gang called ‘Pictures on the Run’. 

Carlos ‘The Jackal’
PC Brown was previously involved in another high-profile case involving international terrorism. 

On 30 December 1973 he was one of the officers called to 48 Queen’s Grove, off the Finchley Road in St John’s Wood. Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as ‘Carlos The Jackal’, had forced his way in and shot Joseph Edward ‘Teddy’ Sieff, the former chairman of Marks and Spencer, and vice president of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

Sixty-eight year old Sieff was in the bathroom getting ready for dinner when the Jackal shot him in the face from 3ft away. The bullet bounced off his teeth and lodged in his jaw, and he fell to the floor unconscious. Sanchez stood over his body ready to finish him off. But the gun jammed, and the young British-educated Venezuelan terrorist was forced to flee. The police arrived just two minutes after they received a phone call from Lois, Teddy’s wife. He was operated on that night and survived the attack. He died in 1982.

This was The Jackal’s first assassination attempt for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in a murderous career spanning 20 years. 

He was nicknamed after the eponymous hero of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 book about an assassination attempt on President de Gaulle, ‘The Day of the Jackal’. A copy of the book was found in the Bayswater flat he shared with his girlfriend at 24b Hereford Road. 

Sanchez went on to be involved in a string of terrorist outrages, including the seizing of the French embassy in the Hague, the bombing of an Israeli bank in London and a grenade attack on a crowded Paris café (all in 1974). He also carried out a RPG bazooka attack on an El Al Boeing jet at Paris Orly airport and shot dead two French agents who had gone to his Paris flat after a tipoff from Mossad (both 1975). 

At the end of 1975, he carried out his most daring attack when he led a raid on an OPEC ministers’ meeting in Vienna and held 48 officials for ransom, extracting millions of dollars from member states. He was finally captured in Sudan in 1994 and sent for trial in Paris. In 1997 he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

These were the two high-profile events in Bob Brown’s long career. After serving at other police stations, in the late 1990’s he was posted to Croydon. In 2015 after 47 years, he was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal and he retired as the country’s longest serving police officer. 

I would like to thank my friend Satsuki Oba who suggested and helped write the story. She lived in West Hampstead for some time before returning to Tokyo.