crime
LKA boss: no mistakes in the search for ex-RAF terrorists
According to LKA chief Friedo de Vries, no mistakes were made in the search for three former RAF terrorists. photo
© Moritz Frankenberg/dpa
The search for three former RAF terrorists has been running since 2015. Daniela Klette was caught in February. The others were able to go into hiding – LKA boss de Vries sees no errors in the search.
“There is always follow-up to operations of this type,” said de Vries. “That will also be the case here, it is part of our professional work.”
Since 2015, the search for Klette and her suspected accomplices Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg has been carried out from Hanover. The LKA president said that thousands of clues and traces had been checked. “Sometimes it was promising, sometimes less so. Of course, there were also failures during that time. What’s important is that that didn’t discourage us.”
Criticism from Berlin “irritating”
De Vries also defended himself against criticism from the ranks of the Berlin police. “If you know the processes and votes, the internal criticism made public is irritating,” he said. During the operation there was always contact and coordination with the Berlin police. The Berlin police union had criticized its colleagues in Lower Saxony in an unusually harsh manner and accused them of wanting to raise their profile.
Klette, Garweg and Staub belonged to the so-called third generation of the left-wing extremist terrorist organization Red Army Faction (RAF), which had carried out numerous attacks and killed people until 1991. The 65-year-old Klette is in custody in the women’s prison in Vechta. Burdock, Staub and Garweg were or are also wanted for several robberies in which people were also shot.
Klette’s suspected accomplices are still on the run. According to the investigation, Garweg lived under a false name on a trailer site in Berlin, but was able to escape.