Baader-Meinhofs' be released soon ?

roscommon | anti-capitalism | other press

Monday February 12, 2007 14:34

by Paddy Murphy

The urban guerrilla in the shape of ... is not history

The Irish Times is reporting that RAF/Baader-Meinhof gang member, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, after 24 years in jail would be released on five years probation on March 27. Brigitte, 57, was arrested in 1982 and sentenced to five life sentences for her role in the killings of leading German figures including industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, Dresdner Bank head Juergen Ponto and federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback.

The ruling comes as President Horst Koehler considers a pardon for Mohnhaupt's former RAF colleague Christian Klar, who has also spent the past 24 years behind bars.

According to Wikipedia : The Red Army Faction was postwar West Germany's most active and prominent left-wing terrorist group. The group has been outlawed and classified as a terrorist group in West Germany and many other countries. It described itself as a communist "urban guerrilla" group. The RAF was formally founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, Ulrike Meinhof, Irmgard Möller and others.The Red Army Faction operated from the 1970s to 1998, committing numerous crimes, especially in the autumn of 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as "German Autumn". It was responsible for 34 murders—including many secondary targets such as chauffeurs and bodyguards—and many injuries in its almost 30 years of existence

... On 11 November 1982 Mohnhaupt, along with Adelheid Schulz, was caught entering an RAF arms cache in the woods near Frankfurt which had been staked out by GSG9 - Border Guards, Group 9 the counter-terrorism unit of the German Federal Police)

... On April 20, 1998 an eight-page typewritten letter in German was faxed to the Reuters news agency, signed "RAF" with the machine-gun red star, declaring the group dissolved:

"Vor fast 28 Jahren, am 14. Mai 1970, entstand in einer Befreiungsaktion die RAF. Heute beenden wir dieses Projekt. Die Stadtguerilla in Form der RAF ist nun Geschichte."

("Almost 28 years ago, on May 14, 1970, the RAF arose in a campaign of liberation. Today we end this project. The urban guerrilla in the shape of the RAF is now history.")

Brigitte