German Left-Wing Militant to Stand Trial After Decades on the Run

BERLIN, 25th March 2025 (BSS/AFP) – A former member of Germany’s far-left Baader-Meinhof gang, who was arrested last year after over 30 years in hiding, is set to face trial on Tuesday for a series of armed robberies.

Daniela Klette, 66, was a member of the radical anti-capitalist group known as the Red Army Faction (RAF), which was responsible for a number of bombings, kidnappings, and killings during the 1970s and 1980s.

Klette was apprehended in February 2024 at her Berlin apartment, where authorities discovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle, explosives, and significant amounts of cash. She had apparently lived there for two decades, hiding in plain sight.

Her arrest followed an investigation in which creators of a German “most wanted” podcast uncovered photographs of Klette attending capoeira classes in Berlin. Although it is unclear if this led directly to her capture, the discovery marked a significant moment in the search for her.

The trial, which begins in Celle in northern Germany, pertains to robberies Klette allegedly committed with two other RAF members in order to finance their life on the run after the group disbanded in 1998. Klette was formally charged with involvement in three other attacks from the 1990s, a period when the gang was still active.

The Baader-Meinhof gang, named after its founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, emerged from the radical student protests of the 1960s. The group’s members violently opposed what they saw as US imperialism and a “fascist” German state, which they believed was still influenced by former Nazis.

In 1977, the group achieved infamy when they murdered German bank executive Jürgen Ponto and kidnapped industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former SS officer, ultimately killing him. The events of the “German Autumn” of 1977 marked a peak in the group’s notoriety, although they continued to operate for many years afterward.

Klette was part of the RAF’s “third generation,” along with Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, who remained active into the 1980s and 1990s. After the group’s dissolution, the trio is believed to have funded their lives in hiding through a series of armed robberies.

Staub and Garweg remain at large, and authorities continue to search for them. If still alive, Staub, now 71, and Garweg, now 56, would be well beyond their prime years.

Klette is accused of involvement in four attacks on money transporters and nine heists from shops, amounting to a total theft of 2.7 million euros (£2.2 million). She is believed to have mainly acted as the getaway driver during the robberies but faces one charge of attempted murder. Prosecutors allege she carried a “realistic-looking” dummy bazooka during some of the heists.

The trial is expected to last around two years, with 12 witnesses scheduled to testify.

When arrested, Klette reportedly offered no resistance. She had been using a fake Italian passport under the alias Claudia Ivone and had lived in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district for many years. Neighbours described her as friendly, always greeting them while walking her dog, and she reportedly paid her rent in cash, likely for extended periods of time.

The attacks she is accused of committing in the 1990s, which are being addressed in separate proceedings, include an attempted assault on a Deutsche Bank building in Eschborn, near Frankfurt, and her involvement in a 1991 RAF attack on the US Embassy in Bonn, which was the capital of Germany at that time. She is also implicated in a 1993 explosives attack on a prison under construction in Hesse state.

The outcome of this trial marks the continuation of Germany’s reckoning with the violent legacy of the RAF, whose members’ criminal activities left deep scars in the country’s modern history.