Times Online and agencies
Posted on 02/12/2007 3:56:09 AM PST by Stoat
Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who will be released next month. The terror group she belonged to is suspected of killing 34 people between 1972 and 1991
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.”
The court said Mohnhaupt would be released on five years probation on March 27.
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.
Speculation at the time was that some in the German justice system thought their sentences insufficient (or were threatened, perhaps) and arranged for their early demise.
It's a shame Germany doesn't have the death penalty: these spoiled savages deserved it.
Agreed. They still don´t regret their crimes after such a long time.
I think those are 70's-era and 1982 arrest photos, respectively, Neither is current.
OK
Nope. Just read Marx. Religion is opium for the dumb masses. She is a hardcore communist and therefore for sure a atheist.
Mohnhaupt and Klar do not, others did. The relase of Mohnhaupt was somehow inevitable because of our justice system. Therefore it is more interesting to me if our President will pardon Christian Klar soon. He obviously is thinking about that although Klar still has not regretted his crimes in a clear statement or in an excuse to the families of the victims so far.
I don´t think Mr. Köhler will pardon Klar. And § 57a StGB needs a reform. Minimum prison time for a "life sentence" should be 20 years, adding 2-3 years for each conviction of a life sentence. And probation afterwards should be at least 10 years. That would have made 28-32 years + 10 on probation for Mohnhaupt.
5 x "life" = 24 years + 5 years probation - this math won´t do.
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