{"id":17086,"date":"2024-03-17T12:46:40","date_gmt":"2024-03-17T12:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/17\/formed-in-the-cold-war-former-members-of-germanys-red-army-faction-are-still-on-the-run\/"},"modified":"2024-03-17T12:46:40","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T12:46:40","slug":"formed-in-the-cold-war-former-members-of-germanys-red-army-faction-are-still-on-the-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/17\/formed-in-the-cold-war-former-members-of-germanys-red-army-faction-are-still-on-the-run\/","title":{"rendered":"Formed in the Cold War, former members of Germany\u2019s Red Army Faction are still on the run"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

German authorities have been tracking down\u00a0the former members of\u00a0the\u00a0Red Army Faction (RAF),\u00a0a now-defunct Cold War-era militant group,<\/strong>\u00a0who have been on the run for nearly 30 years. <\/p>\n

Dubbed the \u201cRAF pensioners\u201d by German media and among Europe\u2019s most wanted people, the female member of a fugitive trio was arrested last month in a Berlin neighborhood where she had been living an apparently normal life for years. <\/p>\n

Now, police\u00a0say they are closing the net on her two alleged male accomplices, hoping to finally bring an end to one of the most notorious chapters in Germany\u2019s post-war history. <\/p>\n

Also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, <\/strong>the RAF\u00a0<\/strong>emerged from a radicalized left-wing student protest movement in West Germany in the late 1960s. <\/p>\n

The group\u00a0\u2013 which was supported in part by East Germany\u2019s Stasi secret police force \u2013 wreaked havoc\u00a0throughout the 1970s and 1980s with deadly bombings, kidnappings and shootings.\u00a0West German politicians\u00a0as well as high-profile figures in the banking, military and business world were targets, and 34 people were killed,\u00a0including\u00a0Dresdner Bank head J\u00fcrgen Ponto and federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback. A further 200 people were injured. <\/p>\n

While some members were arrested, others went underground when the RAF disbanded in 1998, where they have remained undetected \u2013 until now. <\/p>\n

Daniela Klette, 65, was arrested in the German capital last month and authorities say they are closing in on two of her alleged accomplices, Burkhard Garweg, 55, and Ernst-Volker Staub, 69. <\/p>\n

The trio were on the run from armed robbery and attempted murder charges. <\/p>\n

Klette was tracked down in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg on February 26, following a police tip-off. It is\u00a0thought\u00a0she had been living in the neighborhood for around 20 years, under the assumed name Claudia Ivone. <\/p>\n

She is facing two separate legal cases. One relates to charges of involvement in six armed robberies and at least one attempted murder, in crimes allegedly committed between 1999 and 2016, after the RAF was disbanded, according to a press release from Germany\u2019s Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office. <\/p>\n

The other relates to her suspected RAF crimes. While still in the RAF, Klette is accused of involvement in a gun attack on the US embassy in Bonn in 1991, and an explosive attack in Weiterstadt in 1993, the statement says. <\/p>\n

According to the public prosecutor\u2019s office, Klette has not yet provided any information about her past but has admitted that she is Daniela Klette. <\/p>\n

Despite being\u00a0the only woman tagged as \u2018dangerous\u2019 on Europol\u2019s most-wanted list, she successfully evaded detection from authorities for\u00a0almost\u00a0half her life. And in many respects, it appears she was hiding in plain sight. <\/p>\n

Neighbors have described how Klette\u00a0would give maths and German tutoring to local school children in Kreuzberg, German tabloid Bild reported. <\/p>\n

She was also often seen in the local area walking her dog, Malaika. One neighbor described her as a \u201cvery quiet person,\u201d according to local media reports. <\/p>\n

The risk posed by RAF fugitives was underlined after police found a grenade in Klette\u2019s flat, prompting authorities to evacuate the apartment block. Police later confirmed on X that the grenade was safely defused.\u00a0Meanwhile, authorities have warned that Garweg and Staub are considered dangerous and should not be approached as they may be armed. <\/p>\n

It later emerged that investigative journalists were able to track down Klette\u2019s location prior to police pouncing on her Kreuzberg apartment, using artificial-intelligence tools. <\/p>\n

By running the picture from her wanted notice through image search tool PimEyes, the journalists from an ARD television podcast generated search results of an older woman named \u201cClaudia Ivone,\u201d Reuters reported. <\/p>\n

According to their findings, Ivone was a regular participant in Berlin\u2019s Afro-Brazilian scene, until the Covid-19 pandemic struck. It is unclear if the journalists\u2019 findings were the original source of the police tip-off. <\/p>\n

Klette\u2019s arrest has been hailed as a milestone in the fight against domestic terrorism. However, Garweg and Staub\u00a0remain on the run. <\/p>\n

Police have searched several premises in Berlin in recent weeks as part of their efforts and\u00a0announced the arrests of two men\u00a0earlier this month, before later confirming they were not the suspects sought. <\/p>\n

A week after Klette\u2019s arrest, an unconfirmed report from Bild claimed that Garweg had been sighted by locals begging for money at Berlin\u2019s Oberbaum Bridge. <\/p>\n

The pair may also have escaped abroad, police say. <\/p>\n

Cold War \u2018crossroads\u2019<\/h2>\n

Wolfgang Kraushaar, a German historian and political scientist who has studied the\u00a0RAF, says the group was\u00a0borne\u00a0out of opposition to capitalism and imperialism. <\/p>\n

The RAF,\u00a0he said,\u00a0emerged in what was then West Berlin, at the \u201ccrossroads\u201d of the Cold War. <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the Vietnam War, their political goals were primarily to combat US military installations. In addition, there was also the fight against the justice system and the [Axel] Springer press.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Baader-Meinhof Group \u2013 named after its founding members Andreas Baader and Ukrike Meinhof \u2013 is often divided into three generations.\u00a0The first,\u00a0and most prominent period\u00a0<\/strong>from 1970-1977,\u00a0<\/strong>saw the group murder\u00a0public officials and US soldiers and\u00a0take\u00a0many hostages. <\/p>\n

The second generation ran from 1974-1982 and, according to Kraushaar, was largely concerned with taking hostages in order to exchange them with imprisoned members of the organization. In April 1975, six RAF members seized the West German Embassy in Stockholm in a hostage standoff with the goal of forcing the release of imprisoned RAF members. <\/p>\n

The third generation, from 1982-1998, is the one Klette and her accomplices\u00a0are suspected of belonging\u00a0to. The goal of that generation was to \u201cmurder representatives of various power elites in order to throw the system they hated into question,\u201d Kraushaar said. <\/p>\n

He believes that the RAF posed the most significant danger to individuals who represented certain power elites, including former Chancellor of West Germany Helmut Schmidt, Bavarian opposition politician Franz Josef Strauss and press mogul Axel Springer. <\/p>\n

Springer was a German media publisher who, by the early 1960s, owned and controlled much of the country\u2019s conservative print titles including mass-circulation tabloids. He was intrinsically opposed to student radicalism. <\/p>\n

The Baader-Meinhof Group officially disbanded in 1998, sending an anonymous letter to Reuters\u2019 office in Cologne in which the remaining members declared that \u201cthe urban guerrilla group in the form of the RAF is now history.\u201d <\/p>\n

Yet Kraushaar believes the RAF had\u00a0already\u00a0long since ended. \u201cWith the\u00a0fall of the Berlin Wall, the implosion of the GDR [German Democratic Republic] and German reunification, the framework conditions were lost.\u201d <\/p>\n

But high-profile murders carried out by Baader-Meinhof members remain partly unsolved, including the 1989 killing of\u00a0Deutsche Bank head\u00a0Alfred Herrhausen.\u00a0The Red Army Faction claimed responsibility for the assassination, but the perpetrators were never brought to justice.\u00a0<\/em> <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why the capture of an ex-RAF member like Daniela Klette in Berlin is so electrifying for authorities as well as for politicians and parts of the public: people hope that the murder cases that are painfully remembered will finally be solved,\u201d\u00a0said Kraushaar.\u00a0<\/strong> <\/p>\n

There is a chance that Klette may break her long-held silence in exchange for leniency, he\u00a0adds. <\/p>\n

For Kraushaar, the Baader-Meinhof Group represents a wound in Germany\u2019s collective memory that has not yet healed. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that there was a small but determined group that declared war on the [West German] state at a time when the future Nobel Peace Prize winner Willy Brandt had become Chancellor is still a sore point. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a wound that will continue to ache as long as there is no satisfactory investigation into the RAF\u2019s crimes.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

German authorities have been tracking down\u00a0the former members of\u00a0the\u00a0Red Army Faction (RAF),\u00a0a now-defunct Cold War-era militant group,\u00a0who have been on the run for nearly 30 years. Dubbed the \u201cRAF pensioners\u201d by German media and among Europe\u2019s most wanted people, the female member of a fugitive trio was arrested last month in a Berlin neighborhood where <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17087,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}