The RAF: 30 years of left-wing terror in Germany

She was at the top of the list of Europe’s most wanted people with the note “dangerous”: After more than 30 years underground, Daniela Klette has been caught and is in custody. The former Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist was arrested in an apartment building in Berlin. Investigators accuse her of several robberies.

According to the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office, Klette was flown by helicopter to Bremen on Tuesday and from there taken to the Verden district court. A judge issued the arrest warrants against the 65-year-old. At the request of the Verden public prosecutor, a search warrant was also issued for the apartment. According to their own statements, investigators found two magazines from a pistol and cartridges there.

Decades-long search for Daniela Klette

The Verden public prosecutor’s office and the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office have been searching for former RAF terrorists Burkhard Garweg (55), Ernst-Volker Staub (69) and Daniela Marie Luise Klette (65) for decades. They are assigned to the so-called third RAF generation.

Representatives of this generation are said to have killed the then head of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, and the head of the Treuhand, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. However, the perpetrator and motive are still unknown to this day. Rohwedder was shot dead at his desk in his home in Düsseldorf on April 1, 1991. The RAF command claimed responsibility for the crime. Rohwedder was targeted from an allotment area and more than 60 meters away. It was the last assassination attempt attributed to the RAF.

Third RAF generation carried out several attacks

The authorities accuse Garweg, Staub and Klette of attempted murder and a series of aggravated robberies between 1999 and 2016. The crime scenes were therefore in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. The public prosecutor’s office assumes that the attacks were not politically motivated. The accused are said to have committed the crimes in order to get money.

Klette is suspected of being involved in a gun attack on the US Embassy in Bonn in 1991. It is also suspected that she was involved in an explosive attack on the Weiterstadt correctional facility in 1993. Traces indicate that she was also at the crime scene during an anti-terror operation in 1993 in Bad Kleinen, Mecklenburg. The police officer Michael Newrzella and the RAF man Wolfgang Grams died in the action. Former RAF terrorist Birgit Hogefeld was arrested.

See the photo series above: “Bombs, arson attacks, murders – the history of the RAF”.

Editor’s note: This photo series was first published on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the RAF’s dissolution in April 2023. On the occasion of the arrest of Daniela Burdock it has been updated.