Thursday, March 07, 2024

Red Army Faction member Klette appears in court

Chris Nelson
7 March 2024

Daniela Klette, a member of Germany’s notorious Red Army Fraction (RAF) militant group who was arrested recently, as reported by Brussels Signal, made an initial appearance the country’s Federal Court of Justice, a spokesperson for the Attorney General said.

Her appearance before justices on March 7 came after Klette was detained in Berlin after three decades on the run, and is facing charges of armed robbery and at least one attempted murder allegedly committed between 1999 and 2016.

A woman was seen being escorted out of a blue federal police helicopter in Karlsruhe, the city in South Germany where the country’s federal prosecutor sits and the court is located. A spokesperson later confirmed that Klette appeared in front of a judge but did not give further details.

Klette’s court appearace comes shortly after Brussels Signal reported she had been arrested last month.

Klette, 65, a member of the so-called third generation of the militant group, has long been sought alongside two other members of the group, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub.

“Late yesterday evening, police succeeded in detaining Daniela Klette in a Berlin apartment,” Brussels Signal reported Friedo de Vries, head of the criminal investigation department in Lower Saxony, as saying, on February 27 at a news briefing.

“She offered no resistance.”

The RAF, which arose out of the student protests of the late 1960s, was suspected of killing 34 people between 1972 and 1991. The group formally disbanded in 1998 with many members slipping back into ordinary lives.

Police are still searching for two other members of the so-called third generation of the group, Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg. Both men are wanted for the same charges as Klette.












En.wikipedia.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

The Red Army Faction also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970 and active ...





Red Army Faction fugitive Daniela Klette appears in German court

Reuters
March 7, 2024



Daniela Klette, a 65-year-old member of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group, who has been arrested after decades on the run for armed robbery and attempted murder is brought to a helicopter, on the day of her appearance before German Federal Public Prosecutor, in Karlsruhe

KARLSRUHE, Germany, March 7 (Reuters) - Daniela Klette, a member of Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group who was arrested last week after three decades on the run, made an initial appearance on Thursday at the country's Federal Court of Justice, the Attorney General's office said.
Klette, 65, a member of the so-called third generation of the RAF, had long been sought alongside two other members of the group, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub. She was arrested in a Berlin apartment on the evening of Feb. 26.

A statement from the Attorney General's office, citing the arrest warrant, said Klette took part in three RAF attacks between February 1990 and March 1993.

Founded by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof among others, the far-left RAF's first generation emerged from German student protests of the late 1960s.
The group took hostages and murdered more than 30 people, including pu
blic officials, police officers, business leaders and U.S. soldiers. The group formally disbanded in 1998 with some members slipping back into ordinary lives.

Klette faces two separate legal cases.

One, in the state of Lower Saxony in northern Germany, relates to robberies, including armed robbery, and attempted murder, to finance her livelihood after she went underground.

The Attorney General's arrest warrant centres on suspected RAF crimes.

These include an attempted explosion in an administrative building of Deutsche Bank in which three security staff were present, a gun attack on the U.S. embassy in Bonn with at least 10 people present, and an explosives attack on a newly built, unoccupied prison, the Attorney General's office said in a statement.

Police are still searching for two other members of RAF's third generation, Staub and Garweg. Both men face charges of armed robbery and at least one attempted murder committed between 1999 and 2016, the same charges Klette faces in Lower Saxony.

Berlin police raid fails to find suspects in decades-old Red Army Faction case

German police briefly detained several people on Sunday in Berlin during a manhunt for two members of the far-left militant Baader-Meinhof gang, who have been on the run for more than 30 years.

Issued on: 03/03/2024 
German police secure the area where two men were arrested in the hunt for fugitive members of the Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group in Berlin on March 3, 2024. 
© Christian Mang, Reuters
By:NEWS WIRES


Police have been seeking Ernst-Volker Staub, 69, and Burkhard Garweg, 55, from the radical anti-capitalist group also known as the Red Army Faction (RAF).

The search for the two men had intensified in the last days, after Monday's arrest of Daniela Klette, 65, the third member of the long-sought-after trio from RAF that carried out several bombings, kidnappings and killings that traumatised Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.

Police initially announced the arrests of two men on Sunday but later said that further arrests had been made.

However, subsequent identity checks have confirmed that "they are not the people sought," a police spokesman said, adding that those arrested have been released.

Since the RAF disbanded in 1998, Klette and the two fugitives were believed to have been financing their lives on the run through robberies of money transporters and supermarket cash heists.

Klette, the only woman tagged as "dangerous" on Europol's most-wanted list, was arrested on Monday in Berlin on suspicion of attempted murder and various serious robberies between 1999 and 2016.

Following the breakthrough, police said they believed the two remaining fugitives were also hiding in the German capital.

Police on Saturday published new photos that they said were very likely recent photos of Garweg.

Among the photos believed to have been taken between 2021 and 2024 was a clear frontal view of the alleged fugitive, sitting in between two dogs on a sofa.

Police said it "could not be ruled out" that Garweg and Klette had maintained "personal and direct" contact.

(AFP)


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