Ulrich K. "Ricky" Wegener was a renowned German police officer and a founding member of the counter-terrorist force GSG 9. Counter-terrorism refers to the practices, tactics, and strategies that governments, militaries, and other groups adopt in order to fight terrorism. ... Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (GSG 9 - Border protection group 9) is a German counter-terrorism unit, and is considered to be among the best of such units in the world. ...

The man tasked with creating the tactics and strategies that would be used by Germany's first exclusively counter-terrorist force, Colonel Wegener was the Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Protection, now German Federal Police) liaison officer with the German Interior Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, at the time. Wegener was an eyewitness to the botched attempt to rescue the Israeli hostages held by Palestinian terrorists at Munich in 1972, and was delegated to create an elite counter-terrorist unit by the (West) German government after the disaster. Counter-terrorist units were still a relatively unheard of form of combating terrorism and the only truly established groups at the time were Britain's Special Air Service and Israel's Sayeret Mat'kal. Toward this end, Colonel Wegener went to train for a time with both groups, assimilating many of their methods into the tactics he would later set down for GSG 9. Wegener’s time with the SAS is well documented, but his training with Sayeret (and a rumoured participation in the rescue of the Israeli hostages in the Operation Entebbe) is more shrouded in mystery since Israel rarely acknowledges any cooperation with Germany. It is rumored, however, that Colonel Wegener was one of the commandos injured in the Entebbe raid performed by Sayeret in 1976. Wegener was also the GSG 9 commander at the liberation of the hostages of the PFLP on the Boeing 737 Landshut, operated by Lufthansa as flight 181, in Mogadishu, Somalia, in the night from the 17th to the 18th October 1977. For details of the hijacking see RAF. Colonel (IPA: or ) is a military rank of a commissioned officer, with the corresponding ranks existing in nearly every country in the world. ... The Bundespolizei (or BPOL) is the federal police force of Germany. ... The Bundespolizei (or BPOL) is the federal police force of Germany. ... George H. W. Bush and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, November 21st, 1989. ... One of the Black September terrorists on the balcony of the Israeli team quarters at the Olympic village The Munich massacre occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September, a group... It has been suggested that SAS Troops be merged into this article or section. ... Sayeret Matkal (Hebrew: סיירת מטכל - General Staff Reconnaissance unit) is the elite special forces unit of the Israeli Defence Force, established in 1957. ... Operation Entebbe, also known as the Entebbe incident, was a rescue mission performed by Israels elite Sayeret Matkal to free hostages at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda. ... A hostage is a person (sometimes another entity) which is held by a captor (often a criminal abductor) in order to compel another party (relative, employer, government. ... The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) (Arabic Al-Jabhah al-Shabiyyah Li-Tahrir Filastin الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين) is a secular, Marxist-Leninist, nationalist Palestinian... The Boeing 737 is the worlds most popular medium-range, narrowbody commercial passenger jet aircraft. ... The Landshut was a Lufthansa aircraft that was hijacked as part of the events in the German Autumn of 1977. ... Deutsche Lufthansa AG (pronounced ) is the largest German airline, and the second-largest in Europe (behind Air France-KLM, but before British Airways). ... Mogadishus location in Somalia Mogadishu (Somali: Muqdisho, popularly Xamar; Arabic: ‎ ; Italian: ), is the largest city in Somalia, and its nominal capital. ... For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ... Aircraft hijacking (also known as skyjacking) is the take-over of an aircraft, by a person or group, usually armed. ... Red Army Faction Insignia The Red Army Faction (or Red Army Fraction; also commonly known as Baader-Meinhof Group [or Gang]; in German: Rote Armee Fraktion or simply RAF), was postwar West Germanys most active and prominent left-wing terrorist organization; it described itself as an urban guerrilla group. ...

Wegener is currently a member of the KÖTTER GmbH & Co. KG Verwaltungsdienstleistungen Security Committee.