Terrorism: Report: Ex-RAF terrorist Garweg reports from underground

The former RAF terrorist Burkhard Garweg, who went into hiding decades ago, is said to have spoken out from the underground. The Berlin “Tageszeitung” (taz) published a letter that is said to have come from the 56-year-old. She cites Garweg’s lawyers, who did not want to be named, and their own checks on the authenticity of the letter. Spokesmen for the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office and the Verden public prosecutor’s office said in response to a dpa request that the newspaper report was known. The further handling of this will be examined.

Garweg has been searched for intensively since his alleged accomplice Daniela Klette was arrested in Berlin in February.

In the eight-page letter entitled “Greetings from Illegality”, Garweg speaks broadly about the capitalist system and its “structural and brutal violence”, which must be overcome in the course of a “social-revolutionary counter-movement”. He does not distance himself from the left-wing extremist Red Army Faction (RAF), which killed more than 30 people until its declared dissolution in 1998.

Murder and robbery investigations

For years, Garweg, Ernst-Volker Staub (70), who was also in hiding, and Klette (66) have been investigated for, among other things, attempted murder and attempted and completed aggravated robbery. The three ex-RAF terrorists are said to have robbed money transporters and supermarkets between 1999 and 2016, especially in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, in order to finance their underground life. These acts had no terrorist background.

The three previously belonged to the so-called third RAF generation, which carried out attacks and killed people until the early 1990s. Klette, who lived under a false identity in Berlin-Kreuzberg, was arrested there in February. In the meantime, the Verden public prosecutor’s office brought charges against her.

Garweg probably lived in trailers

Shortly after Klette’s arrest, investigators confiscated a construction trailer in Berlin-Friedrichshain in which Garweg is said to have lived under the code name Martin. According to witnesses, the 56-year-old was most recently in Hamburg, among other places.

In the letter, which is believed to have been written by him, Garweg asks for forgiveness from the people from whom he concealed his true identity while illegal. He also demanded that Klette be released.