RAF terrorist
Grenade and other weapons removed from Klette’s apartment: Police operation lasts until the early hours of the morning
Dangerous object from Klette’s apartment: The police did not reveal what exactly was transported in the special trailer
© Annette Riedl / DPA
Several weapons were stored in the apartment of RAF terrorist Daniela Klette, including a grenade. It took all night to render them harmless. The operation was so dangerous that the residents had to evacuate the house.
Two days after the arrest of the former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette’s case continues to keep the capital on tenterhooks: Because she had a veritable cache of weapons in her apartment, the police had the apartment building in Kreuzberg evacuated so that several dangerous items could be removed – including a grenade. The operation only ended in the morning.
The removal took many hours. First, the police secured a grenade in the evening, and early in the morning another potentially dangerous object was removed from the house and loaded into a special vehicle. This left around 1.30am. Even then, the operation wasn’t over yet because another object was supposed to be examined, as it was said. The residents of the seven-story apartment building that had been evacuated were to be accommodated with relatives, friends, in warm buses from the BVG transport company and in a gym.
Few details about weapons found in Daniela Klette’s apartment
The Berlin police did not say what type of dangerous object it was and referred it to investigators in Lower Saxony. She only wrote on Portal The special vehicle will take some time to get there, said a police spokeswoman. The technicians would also have to take a closer look at other items in the apartment.
The police had previously announced in the evening: “Our forensic scientists have so far taken a grenade from the building on Sebastianstrasse in Kreuzberg and rendered it harmless at another location.” An explosive ordnance disposal officer had brought out an object that resembled a smaller grenade. He placed the item in a safety box in a car.
The house opposite was also partially evacuated
The apartment building was evacuated by the police early in the evening and all residents had to leave their apartments. The sidewalk was closed. “Our forensic science team is currently investigating the potentially dangerous items found during the apartment search,” the police wrote on the Internet. At around 10 p.m. the exclusion zone was expanded, the entire street was cordoned off and some apartments in another house were evacuated. “A building opposite is being partially evacuated to allow additional items to be removed,” the police said.
The police had already discovered weapons during the course of Wednesday, as a spokeswoman for the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office confirmed on Wednesday evening. “Der Tagesspiegel” had previously reported on the weapons discovery. The evacuation of the residential building in the Kreuzberg district had nothing to do with this weapon discovery, said the LKA spokeswoman in Hanover. After Klette was arrested on Monday evening, the police discovered, among other things, magazines from a pistol and cartridges.
Are investigators also on the trail of other former RAF terrorists?
The former RAF terrorist Klette lived underground for 30 years. Investigators arrested the 65-year-old in Kreuzberg on Monday evening. The Verden public prosecutor’s office and the Lower Saxony LKA have been searching for the former RAF terrorists Klette as well as Burkhard Garweg (55) and Ernst-Volker Staub (69) for decades. They are assigned to the so-called third RAF generation. Representatives of this generation are said to have killed the then head of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, and the head of the Treuhand, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. However, the perpetrator and motive are still unknown to this day.
It is unclear how close the investigators are now on the trail of dust and waste. For “investigative and tactical reasons,” the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office (LKA) initially did not provide any further details on Wednesday. On Tuesday, LKA President Friedo de Vries proudly announced the arrest of Daniela Klette at a press conference in Hanover.
Serious allegations against Burdock
Specifically, Klette is accused of having, together with Staub and Garweg, carried out an explosive attack on the Weiterstadt correctional facility (JVA), which was under construction, in Hesse in March 1993. The explosion caused damage to the building amounting to around 123 million German marks.
Klette is also said to have attempted with other RAF members to carry out an explosive attack on a Deutsche Bank building in Eschborn, Hesse, in February 1990. The explosive did not detonate because the ignition failed. In addition, according to investigators’ findings, Klette and RAF members fired at least 250 shots at the US embassy in Bonn-Bad Godesberg in February 1991.