At the same time, agents from East Germany's Stasi helped develop services which engaged in more brutal suppression of regime opponents. Stasi assistance came despite the openly stated intention to suppress both communism and atheism, because Gaddafi's stated policy was that he was a socialist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and anti-American. Purges of 1973 initially concentrated on university students in Tripoli and Benghazi and on Libyan army officers.