The end of the Red Army Faction
This week, I’ve seen the impressive German film “The Baader-Meinhof Complex” [my review here]. This week too has seen the release of a notorious member of the group called Christian Klar after 26 years in prison.
The Red Army Faction or RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion in German) – in its early stages commonly known as Baader-Meinhof Group – was postwar West Germany’s most violent and prominent militant left-wing terrorist group. It operated from the late 1960s to 1998, committing numerous crimes, especially in the autumn of 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as “German Autumn”. It was responsible for 34 deaths and many injuries in its almost 30 years of activity.
Following Christian Klar’s release, the only remaining RAF terrorist still behind bars is Birgit Hogefeld, 52, who has been in prison since 1993 for her involvement in the murder of a US soldier in a 1985 bomb attack on the US air base in Frankfurt. In November 1996, she was given three life imprisonment sentences and is currently held in a Frankfurt detention centre.