| Subject: Re: Rivers Barracks/attack on NATO site |
Author:
Sp4 Johnson
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Date Posted: 10:12:33 02/12/07 Mon
In reply to:
Sp4 Johnson
's message, "Re: Rivers Barracks/attack on NATO site" on 21:48:05 09/29/04 Wed
German Red Army Faction Member Paroled
From Associated Press
February 12, 2007 10:27 AM EST
BERLIN - A German court on Monday approved parole for one of the last jailed members of the Red Army Faction in a case that has revived painful memories of the left-wing terrorist group's 1970s heyday.
Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, will be released March 27 after serving 24 years of a life sentence for multiple murders, the Stuttgart state court ruled.
Conservative politicians and police questioned the decision.
"The RAF terrorists murdered 10 police officers," said Konrad Freiberg, the head of Germany's police union. "Although the ruling follows the rule of the law and the opinion of the judges needs to be accepted, we will not forget these murders. A feeling of bitterness remains."
Mohnhaupt was convicted in 1985 of involvement in nine murders, including those of West German chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the head of the country's industry federation.
She was given five life sentences on the murder charges and convictions on other counts. Those included attempted murder for her part in a 1981 rocket-propelled grenade attack on the car of U.S. Gen. Frederick Kroesen - then the commander of U.S. forces in Europe - which injured both the general and his wife.
Mohnhaupt, who will be on five years' probation, was a leader in the Red Army Faction, once known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, which sought to combat what it saw as capitalist oppression of workers and U.S. imperialism.
Active from 1970 - when it grew out of student anti-Vietnam war protests - until 1992, when it abandoned violence, the Red Army Faction formally disbanded in 1998. During that time, the group carried out kidnappings, bank robberies and attacks on prominent government and business figures.
U.S. military facilities and personnel in Germany were also targeted, and the group had ties to Palestinian radicals and to communist East Germany's secret police, the Stasi.
The court decided Mohnhaupt fulfilled the conditions of her sentence and no longer posed a threat to society, court spokeswoman Josefine Koeblitz said.
The decision was made "according to legal conditions and was not an act of clemency," Koeblitz said.
Mohnhaupt was captured early in her involvement with the Red Army Faction in Berlin in 1972 and jailed for several years. Released in 1977, she immediately went back to the group and played a key role in the trail of death it left later that year, which became known as the "German Autumn."
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