Red Army Faction

The Red Army Fraction or Red Army Faction (German: Rote Armee Fraktion or RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang (named after the surnames of two of its main leaders), was one of the most active revolutionary organizations in post-war West Germany, which during its activity was responsible for at least 34 murders. Due to its foquista way of acting, it can be considered an organization of this nature from a Marxist perspective. The RAF purported to be a resistance group in the style of the urban guerrilla of South America, especially the Uruguayan Tupamaros; they understood guerrilla warfare and, therefore, their bombings, as a fight against the system, capitalism and imperialism of the United States in an international struggle for liberation. It operated between 1970 and 1998, causing great upheaval in Germany (especially in the fall of 1977, which led to a national crisis) and the deaths of 34 people and 20 members of the group due to various attacks.

Origins of the name

The name "Red Army Faction", adopted in 1971, was inspired by that of the Japanese Red Army, a left-wing Japanese armed group, or, according to other accounts, it was inspired by the Red Army Soviet, from which they would also have taken their emblem (the Red Star). Although often translated into Spanish as "red army faction", the German word is Fraktion (fraction), a term commonly used to indicate the connection that leftist organizations had with the global struggle of Marxism.

History

Background

The group's antecedents can be traced back to the student protests of the late 1960s, which would later lead to the formation of the Extra-parliamentary Opposition (Außerparlamentarische Opposition, APO). In Germany, protests turned into riots, when on June 2, 1967, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, visited the western part of Berlin (at the time, a divided city). After a day of violent protests by Iranian exiles, supported by German students, the Shah went to the Berlin Opera. In the course of the events after the performance, the German student Benno Ohnesorg — who was participating in a demonstration for the first time — died from a shot to the head by the German police.

Ulrike Meinhof when she was a young journalist in 1964.

This fact, together with other acts of police brutality during other protests (the tactics of the German police of that time are today seen as too aggressive), added to the widespread rejection of the Vietnam War, motivated the union of Thorwald Proll, Horst Söhnlein, Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader, after which they decided to burn down several German stores. They were arrested on April 2, 1968, and while their trial lasted, the journalist Ulrike Meinhof published several articles on her behalf in the political magazine Konkret .

Meanwhile, on April 11, 1968, Rudi Dutschke ("Rudi the Red," as he was called by the tabloid press), the intellectual leader of the student protests, was shot in the head (although badly injured, Dutschke was later able to return to political activism until his death, which took place in 1979 as a result of his injury). The attacker was Josef Bachmann, a manual worker with anti-communist ideas. The students considered the main culprit to be the tabloid newspaper Bild-Zeitung, which had carried headlines such as "Stop Dutschke now!", and therefore the press. Conservative—and especially the Axel Springer Corporation, which published the Bild-Zeitung—became the new target of left-wing Protestants. Meinhof commented: "If one sets a car on fire, it is a criminal offence. If you set a hundred cars on fire, it's a political action."

RAF Formation

The "La Terraza" Club located behind a U.S. Army headquarters in Frankfurt, attacked with a bomb in May 1972 by members of the RAF.

Baader and Ensslin managed to go into hiding after their arson trial, though Baader was arrested again in April 1970 for driving a stolen vehicle with false papers and brought back to trial. In addition, his probation is revoked for the previous trial of burning the German warehouses, with which Baader now faces an imminent confinement of four years. Through Ulrike Meinhof, the collective requests an interview with Baader to write a book on social facts, which is authorized by a German court, and the sessions begin at the "German Institute for Social Issues" at Dahlem in Berlin, on May 14, 1970. That morning, an armed commando consisting of Gudrun Ensslin, Irene Goergens, Ingrid Schubert and Peter Homann entered the Institute shooting and seriously wounding the custodian George Linke, and jumped out of a window to escape to the corner where they were expected by Astrid Proll in a stolen Alfa Romeo vehicle. After this incident, the group was commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof-Bande (Baader-Meinhof Gang). On June 8 of that same year, a first group made up of the lawyer Horst Mahler, Hans-Jurgen Bäcker, Monika Berberich, Brigitte Asdonk, Manfred Grashof and Petra Schelm traveled to Beirut from East Germany, to arrive at a Fatah training camp in Amman (Jordan). On June 21, a second group consisting of Baader, Ensslin, Irene Georgens, Ingrid Schubert, Peter Homann, and Meinhof later received training at the same site, where they were expelled from Palestinian guerilla training camps for not accepting their rules. and discipline.

When they returned to West Germany, they began what they called the "anti-imperialist struggle," consisting of bank robberies to raise money and weapons, and attacks on United States military buildings, police stations and buildings of Axel Springer's newspaper empire, as well as the assassination attempt on a judge. A manifesto written by Meinhof was the first to use the name RAF alongside the red star and the Heckler & Koch MP5. After an intensive investigation, Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, Holger Meins and Jan-Carl Raspe were arrested again in June 1972.

The Stammheim Trial

The members of the RAF were imprisoned in the maximum security prison of Stammheim (built specifically to house them) in isolated cells, without contact between them, and they were only allowed to visit their families every two weeks. Even so, Ensslin designed an "information circuit" with an alias for each member, and thus, through letters circulated by their lawyers, they managed to keep in touch. To protest against the conditions in which they were housed, they started several coordinated hunger strikes; they were eventually force-fed. Meins, however, died on November 9, 1974, weighing just 39 kg for his 1.86 m height. After several public protests, the conditions of the remaining members were improved by the authorities.

It was at this time that the "second generation" of the RAF emerged, made up of sympathizers unrelated to those imprisoned and rallied around Siegfried Haag. This became clear when on February 27, 1975, Peter Lorenz, candidate for mayor of Berlin for the Christian Democratic party, was kidnapped by members of the June 2 Movement to demand the release of several RAF detainees, including Gabriele Krocher Tiedemann.. Since none of them was charged with murder, the state agreed to their demands and released the detainees (Lorenz was later released as well). This group, once released, will feed the ranks of the Red Army Faction. On April 25, 1975, the RAF Commando Holger Meins carried out the Assault on the German Embassy in Sweden. The terrorists who executed the operation were Hanna Krabbe, Bernard Rössner, Siegfried Hausner, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Ulrich Wessel and Lutz Taufer; two hostages were killed when the German government of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused to accede to their demands. Later, other people died when the explosives that the group had planted in the building were detonated.

On May 21, 1975, the "Stammheim Trial" against Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof and Raspe, so called because it took place in a district near Stuttgart. The German congress, anticipating what would possibly be the most tense and controversial trial in German history, had recently changed the penal code to prevent several lawyers accused of serving as liaisons between inmates and "second generation" activists. 3. 4; could act in court.

Stuttgart-Stammheim Prison built to house RAF prisoners.

After this event, the raid was organized on the official headquarters of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna on December 21, 1975, where Ilich Ramírez " Carlos" led the Assault Command along with Hans Joachim Klein, Gabrielle Krocher Tiedemann, where they caused the death of three people and took 42 hostages including several of the oil ministers of the member countries.

On May 9, 1976 (the date Mother's Day is celebrated in Germany), Ulrike Meinhof was found dead in her cell, hanged by a towel. An inquest ruled that she had been a suicide, a conclusion that was highly disputed at the time, leading to a variety of conspiracy theories. A second autopsy revealed traces of semen on her underwear and lacerations on her thighs, suggesting rape. Other theories suggest that Ella Meinhof took her own life by being ostracized by the rest of the group.

During the trial, more actions occurred; among them, on April 7, 1977, the federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback, his escort and his driver were assassinated by the RAF Commando & # 34; Ulrike Meinhof & # 34; made up of Günther Sonnenberg and Stefan Wisniewski, who on board a motorcycle machine-gunned the Prosecutor's vehicle while they were waiting at a traffic light. Finally, on April 28, 1977, after 192 days of trial, the three surviving defendants were found guilty of several murders, as many attempted murders and forming a terrorist organization, being sentenced to life imprisonment.

German Autumn

On July 30, 1977, Jürgen Ponto, president of the Dresdner Bank, was assassinated in front of his home in Oberursel, in a failed kidnapping attempt. Those involved were Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Christian Klar and Susanne Albrecht, the latter being Ponto's goddaughter.

Following the trial, Hanns Martin Schleyer, an ex-Nazi and SS officer, who at the time was the president of the German Industrialists' Association, was kidnapped on September 5, 1977 in a violent operation. A baby carriage suddenly appeared in front of his car, forcing his driver to slam on the brakes. His police escort failed to stop in time and crashed into Schleyer's car. Five masked activists immediately shot the policemen and the driver and captured the businessman. A letter was sent to the Federal Government, demanding the release of eleven detainees, including the Stammheim prisoners. A "crisis team" in Bonn, led by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who, instead of acceding to the demands, decided to use delaying maneuvers, giving the police time to find the place where Schleyer was being held. At the same time, the Stammheim prisoners were forbidden any communication, and were only allowed to receive visits from government officials and prison authorities.

The crisis continued for more than a month as the Bundeskriminalamt (Spanish: "Federal Office of Criminal Investigation") carried out its biggest raid to date. The crisis worsened on October 13, 1977 when the Lufthansa flight LH 181, which was going from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt, was hijacked. A group of Arabs seized the plane, after which the chief introduced himself to the passengers as "Captain Mahmud" (later identified as Zohair Youssef Akache). When the plane landed in Rome to refuel, the hijackers made public the same demands as Schleyer's captors, plus the release of two Palestinians held in Turkey and payment of $15 million. The Bonn "crisis team" decided again not to accede to their demands. The hijacked plane flew to Dubai (United Arab Emirates) via Larnaca (Cyprus), and from there to Oman, where flight captain Jürgen Schumann, whom the hijackers considered "not entirely cooperative", was "tried" before a improvised revolutionary tribunal and assassinated on October 16. The plane took off again, this time under the command of co-pilot Jürgen Vietor, bound for Mogadishu (Somalia).

Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, a former Schmidt minister turned special agent, secretly flew in from Bonn to handle a high-risk rescue mission. At 5am (Continental European time) on October 18, the plane was stormed within 7 minutes by GSG9, an elite unit of the German police. The four hijackers were shot, three of them dying instantly. No passengers were seriously injured, and Wischnewski was finally able to phone Schmidt and tell the Bonn team that the operation had been a success. Half an hour later, German radio broadcast the details of the rescue. The inmates at Stammheim were able to get the news from a hidden radio. Over the course of the night, Baader was found shot in the head, Gudrun Ensslin hanged herself in his cell, and Raspe was taken to hospital from a gunshot wound, where he died the next day. Irmgard Möller, although wounded, was the only survivor. She was released from prison in 1994.

The official investigation determined that it was a collective suicide, but again conspiracy theories appeared. It is not clear, for example, how Baader was able to get a gun into a maximum security prison. Furthermore, it would have been very difficult—if not impossible—for Möller to have inflicted the four stab wounds found near his heart. However, independent investigations revealed the fact that it would have been relatively easy for the inmates' lawyers to have provided them with the weapons. Möller was the only member of the group to survive, and later declared that it was an extrajudicial execution orchestrated by the German government, in response to the demands of the Red Army Faction that they be released.

Memorial in tribute to Siegfried Buback and his escorts, killed in April 1977 by a RAF Command.

The next day, October 19, 1977, Schleyer's kidnappers announced that he had been "executed."

The events of autumn 1977, possibly the biggest criminal and political incident Germany has experienced since World War II, are often called Der Deutsche Herbst ("The German Autumn"). A television miniseries written by Heinrich Breloer called Todespiel ("The Game of Death") provides a good account of the events, at least as they can be reconstructed today.

The RAF in the 1980s and 1990s

In 1984, new members of the RAF—sometimes called "the third generation"—formed an alliance with other European left-wing terrorist groups, such as the French Action Directe group or the Italian Red Brigades in 1988. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allied countries was a strong blow for most left-wing terrorist groups, and by 1990 only the RAF, plus ETA and GRAPO, remained standing.

Already into the 1990s, attacks continued under the name of the «RAF». Some of these were the murder of the industrialist Ernst Zimmermann; the planting of a bomb at the US Air Force base in Ramstein, which killed three soldiers; the assassination of Siemens executive Karl-Heinz Beckurts with a bomb planted in his car; and the assassination of Gerold von Braunmühl, a politician in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Other attacks occurred for which the government blamed the RAF; but despite these accusations, the group did not claim responsibility for these actions, and therefore its responsibility was never proven. On November 30, 1989, the head of Deutsche Bank Alfred Herrhausen was assassinated in Bad Homburg with a complex bomb activated by an optical sensor. On April 1, 1991, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, leader of the Treuhand, the organization responsible for privatizing the economy of the former German Democratic Republic, was assassinated.

Following German reunification in 1990, it came to light that the RAF had received logistical and financial support from the Stasi, the GDR's secret police, who had been in charge of providing accommodation and new identities to several group members.

The last major action against the RAF took place on June 27, 1993. A secret service agent named Klaus Steinmetz managed to infiltrate the RAF. As a result, Birgit Hogefeld and Wolfgang Grams were arrested in Bad Kleinen. Grams and police officer Rüdiger Newrzella were killed during the mission. The official investigation concluded that Grams committed suicide, although others claim that his death was in revenge for the death of Newrzella.

In 1992, the German government claimed that the RAF's main field of action at that time was planning rescue missions for its members in prison. To further weaken the organization, the government declared that some RAF members would be released if the RAF refrained from future violent attacks. The RAF accepted the deal and declared its intention to reverse the escalation of violence and end its attacks on the population. The last action took place in 1993, with the attack on the recently built Weiterstadt prison, reducing the officers on duty and placing various explosives. Although no one was seriously injured, the action caused damage of more than 123 million German marks (about 60 million euros).

On 20 April 1998, an eight-page typewritten statement was faxed to Reuters, signed by the RAF and bearing the red star logo crossed by the MP5. The letter announced the dissolution of the group:

Vor fast 28 Jahren, am 14. Mai 1970, entstand in einer Befreiungsaktion die RAF. Heute beenden wir dieses Projekt. Die Stadtguerilla in Form der RAF ist nun Geschichte.
(About 28 years ago, on May 14, 1970, the RAF emerged in a liberation action. Today we finished this project. The urban guerrillas in the form of the RAF are now history.")

On July 20, 1999, one year after the disbandment of the RAF, a group of four armed individuals attacked an armored truck in the city of Duisburg. This unusual assault was with a grenade launcher and submachine guns, managing to steal the amount of one million marks. Subsequently, it was possible to identify the former terrorists Daniela Kette and Erns-Volker Staub through DNA traces in some hair and saliva remains. Burkhard Garweg was also suspected, since the three had participated in planting the bomb that destroyed the Weiterstadt prison. Currently these people are required by Interpol, without further news of them. Initially the police estimated that they aspired to reconstitute the RAF or some other terrorist group. However, no trace was found, so it is estimated that they stole the money to be able to live in hiding.

These three former members of the RAF, already in hiding, reappeared in 2016 in frustrated attempts to rob armored cars.

Timeline of RAF Actions

1970s

1980s

1990s