Red Army Group: From Baader to burdock – the processes against the RAF

A good year after her arrest in Berlin-Kreuzberg, former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette will be on trial in Lower Saxony from Tuesday. Together with her accomplices Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker dust, she is said to have attacked money transporters and supermarkets after the dissolution of the RAF in order to finance their lives underground.

Although the proceedings before the Verden district court are not about the terrorist attacks of the RAF, the process should attract a lot of attention. Just like the previous procedures against the left -wing terrorist group, of which burdock also threatens.

The department store fire process

The history of the Red Army Group begins with a process. In 1968, a group around Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin put a fire in a Frankfurt department store. When they are in court, journalist Ulrike Meinhof sits in the audience and feels sympathy for arsonists.

Although they are sentenced to prison terms, Baader and Ensslin succeed in setting up. Together with their lawyer Horst Mahler and Meinhof, they found the RAF two years later.

Mammoth process in Stammheim

After several bank robberies and bombings, the police succeeded in arresting the core of the RAF in 1972. They are housed in a high-security wing in the Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. In order to avoid prisoners across the city, a courthouse is built right next to the prison. The state will cost around 20 million marks (10.2 million euros).

The process begins on May 21, 1975, which quickly gets out of control. Baader describes the presiding judge as a “fascist asshole”. For the interrogations, the defendants are towed by judicial officers into the hall.

In September 1975, independent doctors confirm that the RAF prisoners are largely incapable of negotiating. Again and again the terrorists step on hunger strikes to defend themselves against the conditions of detention, the RAF member Holger Meiners dies. The Meinhof accused hanged in her cell in May 1976.

In addition, it becomes known during the process that the investigative authorities have listened to discussions between defenders and the accused about bugs. Ensslin defender Otto Schily, later the SPD Federal Minister of the Interior, says that all the rule of law was “systematically destroyed” in Stammheim.

After 192 days of negotiations, Baader, Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe are sentenced to life in prison. However, the judgments never become final. Because in September 1977 the three committed suicide in their cells after their freedom has failed by the second generation of the RAF.

The second generation also comes to Stammheim

On February 1, 1984, Christian Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt will also be on trial. Processes against other members run in parallel, both in Stammheim and before other courts. There is also a hunger strike in the course of these processes.

Anyone who killed the Federal Attorney General Siegfried Buback and the employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer in 1977 cannot clarify the processes. Clear and Mohnhaupt are sentenced to life imprisonment for participation in this and further murders and their role within the RAF. Mohnhaupt, who is also convicted of murder at the head of Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto, was released early in 2007 on probation, clearly in 2008.

Hogefeld distances itself

In 1993, one of the leaders of the third RAF generation, Birgit Hogefeld, was arrested in 1993. Her companion Wolfgang Grams shoots himself. Hogefeld is still distant in the trial before the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court of the RAF violent acts. In her final word, she accuses the group “A wrong path and catastrophic mistakes”.

The court condemns them to life imprisonment for triple murder. Here, too, RAF murders, such as the attack on the head of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, or the shots on trust boss Detlev Karsten Rohwedder remain unclear.

Like Christian Klar, Hogefeld failed in 2007 with a request for mercy to the then Federal President Horst Köhler, it was only released in 2011.

In the meantime, the next big RAF process is already underway. Verena Becker, a second-generation RAF member, has been on trial in Stuttgart-Stammheim since September 30, 2010. Michael Buback, the son of the Federal Attorney General killed in 1977, appears as a co -plaintiff and accuses her of shot on his father. He accuses the investigative authorities of having protected Becker.

However, she is only accused of a complicity of the murder. Numerous former RAF members like clear and Mohnhaupt appear as witnesses, but most of them are silent about the details of the deed. This process cannot clarify who shot Buback 35 years later.

The Stuttgart Higher Regional Court sentenced Becker to four years in prison for helping to murder, and in 2014 she will be released on probation after two years. This means that all former RAF members are at large until the arrest of burdock.

What’s next?

In addition to the trial before the Verden District Court, Klette also threatens another procedure – for its alleged acts for the RAF. The federal prosecutor accuses them of attempted murder in two cases and complicity in three explosive explosions. Membership in the terrorist association RAF itself has become time -barred. So far, however, it is unclear when there could be a corresponding indictment and a process.