Baader-Meinhof gang member released (Orig. sentenced to 5 life terms, out after 24 years)

A German court has approved the release of one of the last jailed members of the Baader-Meinhof gang, who has spent 24 years in prison for her involvement in multiple kidnappings and murders in the 1970s.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, was arrested in 1982 and given five life sentences for her role in the murders of a number of leading German figures, but will be released on probation late next month after serving the minimum term under German law, the Stuttgart state court ruled today.

News of her release is likely to cause a storm in the country, with relatives of Mohnhaupt’s victims saying that she has expressed no remorse for a murderous campaign which shook West Germany’s new democracy.

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

“This is not a pardon, rather a decision that is based on specific legal considerations,” the court in Stuttgart said in a statement. “The decision for probation was reached based on the determination that no security risk exists.”

Mohnhaupt was convicted for her involement in several murders including that of the industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, Juergen Ponto, the head of the Dresdner Bank, and Siegfried Buback, a federal prosecutor.

The group, also known as the Red Army Faction (RAF), was founded by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof and rose from the student protests of the late 1960s and the anti-Vietnam war movement, before launching a violent campaign of assassinations, kidnappings and bombings against the German elite and United States military personnel.

In total, the group is suspected of killing 34 people between 1972 and 1991. Some 26 RAF members died during that period and another 26 were sentenced to life in prison, many of whom have since been released or pardoned and now work as teachers, accountants, filmmakers and journalists - some under assumed names. Only four, including Mohnhaupt and Klar, remain incarcerated.

See also this previous FR thread on this from last month:

Germany Possible Parole for Unapologetic Terrorist (Senior RAF - Baader-Meinhof hardliner)

Background on the RAF (more information at the linked page)

MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base

Red Army Faction

Mothertongue Name:
Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF)

Aliases: Baader-Meinhof Gang, Baader-Meinhof Group

Base of Operation: Federal Republic of Germany; German Democratic Republic; Germany

Founding Philosophy: The Red Army Faction is the name assigned to the terrorist successors of the Baader-Meinhof Group. In a confusing interplay of names, the Red Army Faction was the original name of the Baader-Meinhof Group. However, Baader-Meinhof Group became the organization's assigned name for the period 1968-1977. The Baader-Meinhof Group essentially ceased to exist in 1977 with the multiple suicides of its original leaders. Following the deaths, the remaining followers of the Baader-Meinhof Group reverted to its original name, the Red Army Faction. The Red Army Faction would terrorize Germany from 1978 until 1992.

The Red Army Faction loosely followed a Communist ideology. The group targeted German business and political leaders, as well as U.S. military facilities. While the group's membership at any given time was estimated at only 10 to 20 people, the Red Army Faction carried out numerous deadly terrorist acts. The group was never successful in its goal of creating additional socialist states in Europe

Current Goals: By the early 1990s, the Red Army Faction had largely run out of steam. On April 10, 1992, the group issued a communique that declared a conditional cease-fire. Six years later, on April 20, 1998, the Red Army Faction officially announced the dissolution of their group.

She goes to jail and Joshka Fischer gets put into a position of power.

Here's a cut and paste from an article supposedly from Frontpage. I couldn't find it on Frontpage's site, so my apologies if it's truly not from there:

A Tale of Two Terrorists
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 18, 2001
by Ronald Radosh
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/archives/radosh/2001/rr01-18-01p.htm

AS MOST OF US are observing the antics of the liberal and radical Left, as
it mobilizes its troops to prevent the nomination of John Ashcroft as
Attorney General, it might be easy to miss a scandal that is breaking out
in Germany, but is receiving little attention here. Yet this new incident
replicates similar occurrences in our own past, and therefore has lessons
for us.
The episode concerns the past of Germany's most popular politician and
currently the nation's Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, as well as that
on an old associate of his in the 1960's student New Left, one
Hans-Joachim Klein, who at present is on trial in Germany on charges
involving the murder of three people during a terrorist raid on OPEC back
in 1975. In human life, twenty-five years is a long time past, although in
terms of history, it is but a second. And, to be fair to Minister Fischer,
he is changed man. During the crisis over intervention in the Balkans,
Fischer supported armed intervention, opposing his own stalwart left-wing
in the Green Party.

Back in 1973, Fischer was in a far different place. And his past has
suddenly come back to haunt him. It returned only because the daughter of
the late left-wing terrorist, the notorious Ulrike Meinhof, of the
so-called Bader-Meinhof gang that led the self-proclaimed Red Army
Faction- found previously unknown photographs in her mother's archive of
Mr. Fischer in action in the radical era. They portrayed an armed and
helmeted Fischer disarming, hitting and beating up one Rainer Marx, then a
German police officer who had been surrounded by radical leftists, who
threw him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly. Moreover, Fischer is
shown hitting Marx from behind---hardly the actions of a gentleman.

But there is more to the story. It turns out that another now-retired
police officer, Horst Breunig, alleges that Fischer also played a role in
the severe burning of one of his fellow officers, Jurgen Weber, during a
street demonstration in Frankfurt in May of 1976. Weber was injured by the
use of gasoline bombs - Molotov cocktails - used by the German New Left on
a regular basis back in 1975 and 1976. The bomb that injured Weber was
used one day after Meinhof's death, as street protests erupted and
authorities had banned violent demonstrations. A Molotov cocktail hit
Weber's police car, setting the officer on fire as he suffered severe
burns over sixty percent of his body. Breunig argues that, one day before
the incident, Fischer took part in a meeting planning the action, and
approved the use by his comrades of firebombs.

Various of Fischer's old comrades have corroborated that, as officer
Breunig charges, Fischer had in fact voted with his movement's majority
for the use of Molotov cocktails, and had discussed how to get them
through a police cordon. And although no one charges that Fischer himself
threw the bomb, his assent gives him moral responsibility for its use.
What does Fischer say in response? And it is here that we see a pattern
emerge, so familiar to us in the United States. The New York Times quotes
him as saying: "Should I distance myself from the struggle over Vietnam
and Chile? No. What I must distance myself from is being a street
fighter." What exactly does Fischer mean by this? Evidently, it is the
simple assertion, which translated, is that the cause I supported was
just; possibly the means we used were incorrect. But the necessity for our
moral action against the US in Vietnam and Chile must explain and excuse
whatever wrong tactics we may have used. It is enough that now I distance
myself from those who were street fighters, although back then, one had to
join in solidarity with those who saw the need for violence. And join in
solidarity Fischer did. Fischer is quoted as having, in 1976, referred to
"our solidarity with our comrades in the underground," an acknowledgement
that they were all part of the same Movement. And even though he
supposedly opposed their choice, Fischer went on for four more years,
extending to the end of the decade, as a commander in Frankfurt of the
so-called "Riot Groups," a revolutionary movement pledged to the overthrow
of the German democratic government.

So many years later, Fischer's supporters attribute his actions to
so-called "youthful excess," and they argue his actions should be forgiven
and that he be allowed to continue in government as his nation's Foreign
Minister. Others argue that, at a time when the German government is faced
with right-wing extremists and ultra-nationalists who target immigrants
with terror and force, they cannot afford to have in high office a
government official who engaged in similar tactics when he was younger.

For those of us in the United States, the conflict brings up memories of
those remnants and survivors of the 60's New Left who praise their old
movement for its commitment to "participatory democracy" and who attribute
the antics of their comrades in the Weather Underground of the late 60's
to a similar revolutionary excess and enthusiasm, to be forgiven so they
can resume a positive role working for "social change" in today's new
America. Thus Bernadine Dohrn can laugh off her notorious espousal of
violence as a leader of the Weather Underground and gain plaudits for her
new role as Director of the Children and Family Justice Center of
Northwestern University's School of Law Legal Clinic, where she supervises
60 law students dedicated to serving children's needs. And like Fischer in
Germany, Dohrn is unapologetic about her activities in the 1960's. As she
told a recent interviewer for the radical Z magazine, reflecting on the
New Left at Columbia University in 1968, "I remember the creative spirit
of liberation and the moral force generated by Columbia students," who she
says took action in solidarity with justice and freedom for those in
Vietnam and Harlem and risked "their own privileged futures." As for the
violence of the New Left, which she extolled and supported, Dohrn only
says that she is "astonished at how restrained the movement was" as it
took part in a "global movement for liberation."

Indeed, Dohrn praises her fellow revolutionaries David Gilbert---now in
prison for life for his role in the murder of a police officer during the
infamous Brink's robbery committed by the Weather Underground - and Ted
Gold - who blew himself up accidentally in a West Village townhouse where
he and his comrades were making bombs - as two men with a true "clarity of
vision." And hence she favors Gilbert's release from prison as a "prisoner
of conscience," whose just behavior for the cause has been "criminalized"
by the authorities, whose acts were merely those of "social commitment,"
and not "crimes."

Dohrn, like Fischer, has hardly suffered for her attempts to bring down
the American democratic republic. Indeed, even without being able to
practice law as a result of her own previous conviction, Dohrn has been
taken on by Northwestern University in a prestigious job where she trains
other lawyers in legal activism, without pausing for a moment to seriously
reevaluate her commitment to revolutionary terrorism. It was Dohrn,
speaking at the Weather Underground's "War Council" in Flint, Michigan in
1969, who spoke the now infamous words about Charles Manson and his cult
who killed Sharon Tate in Los Angeles---"Dig it. First they killed those
pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a
fork into a victim's stomach! Wild.!"

Fischer has gone on to leadership and prominence in Germany's postwar
democratic government, where he is a popular political leader who regrets
the tactics he once espoused, but similarly justifies whatever horrors
took place as a result of necessary excesses in a just struggle against US
imperialism. Neither has suffered for their New Left activism; indeed,
they have gained fame, good jobs and the respect of their brethren. And
both, it is clear, look back with pride on their actions and their old
politics. Once again, we have more proof that being on the Left in one's
early life is never having to say you are sorry.

At least one RAF 'action' against US forces was personally joined by Mohnhaupt. This one had her fingerprints on it:

MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base

2nd of June Movement and Red Army Faction attacked Military target (Sept. 15, 1981, Federal Republic of Germany)

Incident Date: Sept. 15, 1981

Terrorist Organization(s): 2nd of June Movement , Red Army Faction

City: Heidelberg

Country/Area: Federal Republic of Germany

Region: Western Europe

Target: Military

Tactic: Bombing

Suicide: No

Weapon: Explosives

Fatalities: 0

Injuries: 2

US Attack: Yes

US Fatalities: 0

US Injuries: 2

Attack Claimed: Yes

Coordinated: No

Description: FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY. Terrorists hidden on a wooded hill fired Soviet-made RPG-7 rocket grenades at the armorplated car of the commander of U.S. forces in Europe, General Frederick J. Kroesen. The General's wife and two others were traveling with him to U.S. headquarters in Heidelberg. General Kroesen and his wife sustained only minor injuries and a slight loss of hearing. The armorplating probably saved their lives--the first grenade caved in the trunk and caused the back window to shatter, causing some minor injuries to the occupants from the flying glass. The U.S. military escort vehicle pulled up and the police searched the area. The assailants escaped immediately after the attack. Police discovered a Soviet-made bazooka, a small tent, sleeping bags and provisions as well as wireless radio equipment. The Red Army Faction claimed responsibility for the attempted assassination. The letter claimed credit for the Gudrun Ensslin Commando stating that the general "is the one who orders devastation by conventional weapons and decides when and where neutron warheads will be fired...." Later in September, investigating authorities announced that through fingerprint analysis it had been determined that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, currently being sought as a terrorist member of the June 2nd Movement, was involved in the attack on the general.

Information Source: Chronology Data 1968-1997

Publication Date: 04/03/2001

Incident-data Provider: RAND Corporation

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Baader-Meinhof gang member released

Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, was given five life sentences but will be released on probation next month after serving the minimum term under German law