After decades of manhunt, the police arrested Daniela Klette in Berlin. The suspected ex-RAF terrorist is now in custody for several robberies. There has now been another arrest.
She was wanted for more than 30 years, and now the suspected ex-RAF terrorist Daniela Klette is in custody for six robberies between 1999 and 2016. A tip from the public in November 2023 led to her arrest, said Friedo de Vries, President of the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office.
Klette was arrested by police from Lower Saxony on Monday afternoon in an apartment in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. The apartment in the seven-story apartment building near the former border between West and East Berlin is currently being examined by forensic scientists.
Second arrest of a man in Berlin
According to the LKA, the 65-year-old was now flown by helicopter to Bremen and from there taken to the Verden district court. A judge issued arrest warrants against them.
Investigators have also arrested another person in Berlin. It is unclear whether this is one of the suspected ex-RAF members Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, who are also wanted. The arrested man was in the “sought age group,” said the President of the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office, Friedo de Vries. His identity is still being clarified; it is not certain whether his identification document is genuine.
Police officers carry boxes and bags into the apartment building in Berlin where Daniela Klette was arrested.
Magazines and ammunition found in apartment
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the suspected left-wing terrorist Klette was identified through fingerprints. Klette has used a false identity in recent decades. A foreign passport with a different name is currently being investigated by the police. The head of the Verden public prosecutor’s office, Clemens Eimter Bäumer, said that the arrested 65-year-old did not deny that she was Daniela Klette. “We are sure that it is Daniela Klette,” said de Vries from the LKA Lower Saxony.
In the apartment that was not rented by Daniela Klette, the investigators said they found two magazines for a pistol and ammunition. A weapon was not recovered.
Faeser: “Nobody should feel safe underground”
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser also sees the arrest as an important signal to the victims of the RAF. “This successful search is the result of decades of tireless investigative work. The constitutional state has shown its perseverance and staying power. Nobody should feel safe underground,” said a statement from the Interior Ministry.
The crimes of the Red Army Faction represent “unprecedented dangers of left-wing extremism and left-wing terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany to this day.” A further criminal investigation into these crimes is now possible. “We also owe this clarification to the families of the RAF victims,” said the SPD politician.
Lower Saxony’s Justice Minister Kathrin Wahlmann spoke of a “great success in the investigation”. If the suspicion is confirmed, this would also be a signal to “serious criminals across the country: They cannot feel safe even years after their crimes, but must always expect consistent prosecution by our authorities,” said Wahlmann. She now hopes to make progress in the investigations against other RAF members.
Robberies for Livelihood
According to its own information, the public prosecutor’s office has been investigating Klette and the two other ex-RAF members Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg since 2015.
The authorities accuse the trio of attempted murder and a total of six aggravated robberies between 1999 and 2016. Specifically, according to the information, it is about acts in Stuhr, Wolfsburg, Hildesheim and Cremlingen in Lower Saxony as well as Bochum and Duisburg in North Rhine-Westphalia. They therefore took place in 1999, 2006, 2015 and 2016, among others.
The public prosecutor’s office assumes that the attacks were not politically motivated. It is probably a procurement crime. The trio, who have been on the run for more than 30 years, are said to have tried to finance their underground life with the robberies.
Also Attorney General determined
The Federal Prosecutor General in Karlsruhe has also been investigating Klette for three RAF terrorist attacks since the early 1990s. It’s about explosive attacks on the Weiterstadt prison in 1993 and a Deutsche Bank building in Eschborn in 1990, as well as a gun attack on the US embassy in Bad Godesberg in 1991.
Most recently, on February 14th, the Verden public prosecutor’s office requested information about former RAF terrorists in the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY … unsolved”. The information will continue to be evaluated, but according to the public prosecutor’s office, the decisive information did not come from a viewer of the program.
A few days after the program was broadcast, there was a false alarm when a regional train arrived in Wuppertal Man mistakenly for the former RAF member Ernst-Volker Staub was held.
Third generation of the RAF
The RAF fought violently against the supposedly “imperialist system” of the Federal Republic for more than 20 years. From 1971 to 1993, terrorists killed 34 people, including business and political representatives such as Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback and employers’ president Hanns Martin Schleyer. More than 200 people were injured by the terrorist group.
Burdock, dust and Garweg are assigned to the so-called third RAF generation. Representatives of this generation are said to have killed the then CEO of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, and the acting head of the trust, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder.
The explosive attack on the Weiterstadt prison construction site in March 1993 was the last RAF attack. More than 200 kilograms of explosives destroyed three accommodation buildings and the administrative wing of the institution under construction. No people were hurt. The property damage amounted to 80 to 90 million German marks. In April 1998 the RAF announced its dissolution.
Holger Schmidt, SWR, tagesschau, February 27, 2024 11:34 a.m