As of: February 28, 2024, 2:54 p.m
By: Michel Guddat
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For three decades, the RAF terrorized the country and claimed responsibility for over 30 murders of people from politics, business and administration.
Berlin – The left-wing radical Red Army Faction (RAF) carried out terrorist attacks, murders and attacks in the Federal Republic of Germany over a period of more than three decades.
In April 1998, the terrorist group officially announced its dissolution.
Since then, several former members of the RAF have gone into hiding.
One of those members was Daniela Klette, who evaded authorities for almost 30 years until she was arrested in Berlin on Monday (February 26).
Klette belonged to the so-called third generation of the RAF, just like the still wanted terrorists Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub.
Former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette was arrested.
She is assigned to the third generation of the terrorist group.
© Tim Brakemeier/dpa/BKA
The emergence of the left-wing extremist terrorist group Red Army Faction (RAF)
The RAF was originally known as the Baader-Meinhof Group in the late 1960s.
After the death of the demonstrator Benno Ohnesorg in June 1967 and the assassination attempt on the student leader Rudi Dutschke in April 1968, parts of the “Extra-Parliamentary Opposition” became radicalized.
In 1968, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and two other people decided to carry out arson attacks on two department stores in Frankfurt am Main in protest against the Vietnam War.
During the court case regarding the attacks, the journalist Ulrike Meinhof comes into contact with Baader and Ensslin.
She joined the group at a later date: in May 1970, Meinhof and three of her accomplices managed to forcibly free Baader from prison in Berlin.
This action is seen as the birth of the terrorist group RAF, which then went underground.
Terrorist group Red Army Faction (RAF)
The RAF sees itself as part of the class struggle and a global uprising against imperialism and capitalism.
Its name refers to the army of the communist Soviet Union (Red Army).
With its armed struggle and the concept of an alleged urban guerrilla, it compares itself to global liberation movements.
First generation of the RAF - Baader, Ensslin and Meinhof carry out numerous raids and attacks
By the end of 1974, the group around Baader, Ensslin and Meinhof carried out numerous bank robberies and bomb attacks, including on US military facilities and German security authorities.
Four people die and 41 are injured.
Before these actions, they had received military training in Jordan from the Palestinian organization Fatah.
In May 1972, US officer Paul A. Bloomquist became the first fatality in an RAF bomb attack.
Just twelve days later, three soldiers lost their lives in an explosive attack on the European headquarters of the US armed forces in Heidelberg.
In June, the hard core of the RAF, consisting of Baader, Holger Meins and Jan-Carl Raspe, were arrested by investigators.
Ensslin, Meinhof and Brigitte Mohnhaupt follow shortly afterwards.
During their detention, the detainees repeatedly protest against the prison conditions.
Holger Meins died during a hunger strike in November 1974.
Well-known members of the first generation of the RAF:
Andreas Baader
Gudrun Ensslin
Ulrike Meinhof
Holger Meins
Jan Carl Raspe
Second generation of the RAF: suicides in prison and the murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer
From around 1975, Christian Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt, leading figures of the second generation of the RAF, aimed to improve the conditions of prisoners in Stuttgart-Stammheim and to force their release.
They even considered taking hostages at the German embassy in Stockholm in April 1975. The federal government rejected their demand, which led to a tragic outcome: two diplomats and two hostage-takers were killed.
Ulrike Meinhof commits suicide in her cell.
During the so-called “German Autumn” in 1977, the RAF carried out a series of brutal attacks across the Federal Republic in order to free the prisoners in Stammheim.
First, Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback was shot in Karlsruhe in April, then the head of the Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto, was murdered in Oberursel in July.
Employer President Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped by the RAF in Cologne on September 5, 1977.
© dpa
In September, an RAF commando kidnapped the employers' president Hanns Martin Schleyer in Cologne.
In October, Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Lufthansa plane “Landshut”.
Although the flight captain is shot in cold blood, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) remains firm and has the elite border guard GSG 9 storm the plane.
In response, Baader, Ensslin and Raspe commit suicide in prison.
Schleyer's body is found in Mühlhausen in Alsace.
Well-known members of the second generation of the RAF:
Brigitte Mohnhaupt
Christian Sure
Peter-Jürgen Boock
Susanne Albrecht
Monika Helbing
Third generation of the RAF: wave of violence continues
After Klar and Mohnhaupt were arrested in 1982, the third generation, which also included Daniela Klette, changed their strategy.
The RAF is now increasingly striving to internationalize terrorism.
The wave of violence continues below a little-known “command level.”
By 1990, several targeted assassination attempts were carried out.
In November 1989, Deutsche Bank CEO Alfred Herrhausen was killed in a bomb attack in Bad Homburg.
The head of the Treuhandanstalt, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, was shot at his desk in his Düsseldorf home in April 1991 from a distance of more than 60 meters.
In both cases, the perpetrator and motive remain unknown to this day.
Rohwedder's death marks the last assassination attempt attributed to the RAF.
Many crimes committed by the third generation of the RAF have not yet been solved.
Sent the world into turmoil: Police officers inspect the blown-up Mercedes on the street in Bad Homburg after the assassination attempt on Alfred Herrhausen in November 1989.
© Kai-Uwe Wärner/dpa
Well-known members of the 3rd generation of the RAF:
Wolfgang Grams
Birgit Hogefeld
Daniela Burdock
Burkhard Garweg
Ernst Volker Staub
The end of the RAF
Almost 28 years after its founding, the RAF announced its dissolution in a final letter in 1998.
More than 30 murders are attributed to them, some of which are considered unsolved.
There are also kidnappings, hostage-taking and bombings.
Scores of RAF members are given life sentences, while two dozen have killed or committed suicide.
While the Federal Republic is searching for RAF terrorists around the world, the GDR state security agency is granting ten of them a civil life with false identities in eastern Germany.
Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 were some of them exposed.
Even in later years, the authorities continued to search for former RAF terrorists, including for robberies that they committed to finance their livelihood.
After Daniela Klette was arrested, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub, who also belong to the third generation, are still on the run.
Some former terrorists have now been released from prison after serving their sentences or through pardons.
They include Birgit Hogefeld, Christian Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt.
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