It was probably the most spectacular arrest in a long time in reference to the left-wing terrorist group the Pink Military Faction (RAF). Following suggestions from the general public, investigators from Decrease Saxony rang the doorbell of an residence constructing within the district of Kreuzberg in Berlin on February 26, 2024.
The girl they arrested there was 65-year-old Daniela Klette, a member of the previous RAF, additionally often called the Baader–Meinhof Group. Since then, investigators have hoped to unravel many beforehand unsolved crimes dedicated by the group which carried out assaults and terrorist assaults in Germany till the Nineties.
Money, Kalashnikovs and a bazooka
Amongst different issues, investigators discovered €40,000 (about $42,000) in money, a bazooka with a warhead, pistols and Kalashnikov rifles. There was additionally an embarrassing mishap: officers apparently allowed Klette to make use of the restroom, throughout which she seized the chance to warn her suspected confederate Burkhard Garweg by telephone.
Garweg, who was additionally in Berlin on the time, and the third suspected former terrorist, Ernst-Volker Staub, have since disappeared. “I can not think about that the 2 of them are presently residing out their days in peace,” Friedo de Vries, the top of the Decrease Saxony State Prison Police Workplace, informed the German Press Company. “We’re decided to arrest Mr. Garweg and Mr. Staub.”
The weapon finds are the most important success for the investigating authorities in years. One of many pistols, for instance, comes from a raid on a gun retailer in Maxdorf, Rhineland-Palatinate in 1984. Officers hope to have the ability to hyperlink extra of the weapons discovered to RAF crimes. It is nonetheless largely unclear who precisely dedicated the robberies and murders.
Pink Military Faction outlined by hatred of capitalist state
The so-called “third era” of left-wing terrorists, to which Klette and the 2 fugitives additionally belonged, have been energetic between 1984 and 1993 and killed 10 folks. The murders of Alfred Herrhausen, the top of Deutsche Financial institution, in 1989 and politician Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, head of the Treuhandanstalt, in 1991 precipitated a specific stir.
On the time, the Treuhandanstalt was an company tasked with organizing the privatization of state-owned firms within the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). These have been typical targets of the phobia group: what they noticed as representatives of the hated capitalist state.
There have been three generations of left-wing extremist terrorists within the historical past of the Federal Republic of Germany. Their objectives in the beginning, after the scholar revolts on the finish of the Nineteen Sixties, have been to convey a few left-wing revolution in Germany and put an finish to the US conflict in Vietnam. The primary RAF era across the founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof carried out assaults on malls and have been imprisoned.
The second era made it their purpose to free Baader and Meinhof from jail. Within the mid-Seventies, they dedicated murders corresponding to these of the then-Legal professional Common Siegfried Buback and Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former SS officer and head of the Federation of German Industries and the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations.
The third era, which was energetic till the terrorist group dissolved itself in 1998, was probably the most mysterious: it carried out assaults with out being found. Its members later raided cash transports and banks to finance their lives underground and remained undetected — till now.
Did the authorities look the opposite method for too lengthy?
In accordance with Konstantin von Notz, the Inexperienced Celebration’s inside affairs professional within the Bundestag, the intelligence providers didn’t take the persevering with risk posed by the RAF members severely sufficient.
“The crimes dedicated by them, so the argument goes, have been solely to boost cash to finance the perpetrators’ personal livelihoods within the underground. An ongoing political motivation for the crimes was at all times dominated out,” von Notz informed DW. The wished posters of Klette, Garweg and Staub confirmed footage that have been a long time previous. All three appeared to have disappeared from the face of the Earth.
Klette is now in Vechta girls’s jail in Decrease Saxony, strictly remoted from different prisoners and underneath round the clock video surveillance in her cell. Like many captured RAF members earlier than her, she has remained silent concerning all of the accusations.
After her arrest, there have been demonstrations of solidarity for Klette in a number of cities throughout the nation. On March 9, round 600 folks in Berlin marched in entrance of the Klette’s residence. She was already in custody on the time. On March 17, there was demonstration in Vechta, the place she is presently imprisoned.
One other protest motion has been introduced for this coming week in Vechta. For von Notz, this can be a signal that the ideology of the left-wing extremists remains to be standard.
“The findings within the accused’s residence alone, but in addition expressions of sympathy from the left-wing extremist scene, present there’s nonetheless a substantial hazard from the members of the third era of the RAF and that their actions are nonetheless not clearly condemned by some deranged folks,” he mentioned.
No less than 33 murders in 22 years
The terrorist group carried out not less than 33 murders between 1971 and 1993. Specialists estimate that as much as 80 folks have been energetic within the group’s inside circle at anybody time. In the whole interval as much as its dissolution in 1998, round 1,000 folks have been convicted of supporting the group and round 500 for membership.
The general public was shocked by the cold-bloodedness with which bodyguards, drivers and law enforcement officials have been murdered. Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped in Cologne on September 5, 1977, and his 4 companions have been actually executed with 119 photographs.
A complete of 26 members of the RAF management have been sentenced to life imprisonment. A few of them have been launched, corresponding to Christian Klar, one of many main heads of the RAF within the Seventies. He has by no means distanced himself from his actions.
This text was initially written in German.
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