A former member of the Red Army Faction (RAF), arrested in February 2024 after 30 years on the run, was sentenced on Wednesday May 27 to thirteen years in prison for a series of armed robberies committed after the dissolution of the far-left group.
Daniela Klette, 67, belongs to the third generation of the organization which shook the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) with attacks, kidnappings and assassinations committed in the name of the anti-imperialist struggle and which self-disbanded in 1998.
Daniela Klette was appearing for robberies committed between 1999 and 2016 with accomplices, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub, two other alleged former members of the RAF still on the run, to finance their clandestine life. “During their attacks, they acted by dividing tasks among themselves and very secretly,” declared judge Lars Engelke while delivering his verdict before the court in Verden (north-west Germany).
The court has several proofs that Daniela Klette and her two accomplices knew each other very well, including private photos and DNA traces. They considered all this “their work” and thus ensured a source of income, added Lars Engelke.
The targets were armored vans and the checkouts of large supermarkets, mainly in the state of Lower Saxony (north). According to the prosecution, the total loot amounted to 2.4 million euros. When the judgment was announced, a certain agitation was felt among the fifty people present in the room and cries of “Freedom for Daniela” rang out.
Daniela Klette was arrested a little over two years ago in a Berlin apartment in the bohemian district of Kreuzberg, where she lived for a long time under a false identity, a life in hiding that she enjoyed, according to her own words.
No remorse
During many of the heists, Daniela Klette allegedly played the role of driver and held a “realistic-looking” fake bazooka. Daniela Klette is also being prosecuted for her participation in three politically motivated attacks between 1990 and 1993, before the dissolution of the RAF. These three attacks are the subject of a separate procedure.
In detail, Daniela Klette is said to have installed explosives in front of the Deutsche Bank administrative building in the suburbs of Frankfurt (center) in 1990, shot at the United States embassy in Bonn (west) in 1991 and participated in an explosive attack against a prison in southern Germany in 1993. The police are still looking for Daniela Klette’s two accomplices, MM. Garweg and Staub.
Throughout the entire procedure, Daniela Klette showed no remorse, according to the public prosecutor. Witnesses and victims of the robberies spoke of the serious psychological consequences of what they suffered, sometimes indicating that a normal life was no longer possible due to the trauma. Having a red star with a machine gun as its symbol, the RAF is judged responsible for around thirty assassinations between 1971 and 1991.
Emerging from the radical fringe of the 1968 student movement and known as the “Baader-Meinhof Band” – the surnames of its founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof – the RAF advocated an “urban guerrilla war” against the government and the German elite. Its main leaders, including Meinhof and Baader, committed suicide in prison in the 1970s. The RAF’s actions left 34 people dead before the group disbanded on its own in April 1998.
