RAF terrorist Christian Klar released - only one Baader Meinhof gang member still in jail

A very fit and healthy looking former Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist 56 year old Christian Klar has been released after 26 years in prison - his granting of parole was announced on November 24th. . He left the Bruchsal prison last Friday says his lawyer and this was confirmed yesterday by The Ministry of Justice in Baden-Wuerttemberg .

Klar was a key accomplice of Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who was released in March 2007 after serving 24 years in jail for murdering prominent establishment figures, including those of West German chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback, Dresdner Bank head Juergen Ponto and Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the head of the country's industry federation. He was convicted in 1985 of nine murders and 11 counts of attempted murder - he had been in prison since 1982.

At the time Klar had appealed for clemency to the German President Horst Köhler. However he also sent a message to the Rosa Luxemburg Conference of left-wing groups in January, declaring that the time had come to "complete the defeat of the plans of capitalism and to open the door to another future." Monday, May 07, 2007 Clemency for RAF terrorists refused by German President

At the time Günther Beckstein, the conservative interior minister of Bavaria, warned Köhler not to grant clemency. A noted Protstant he told the mass-circulation newspaper Bild: "The aggressive tone and the ideological stubbornness show that this is an incorrigible terrorist criminal." Beckstein went on to become President of Bavaria but in the September elections the CSU had a massive setback after 4 decades in power and he lost his position - to be followed by Horst Seehofer.

The leader of the liberal Free Democrats party, Guido Westerwelle, took a similar line. "Klar is no reformed criminal," he said. "He remains a convicted serial killer and I strictly oppose granting him clemency."

Now only one former member of the RAF, Birgit Hogefeld, 52, remains in prison. She was arrested in 1993 and in November 1996 she was given three life sentences and is currently in a Frankfurt detention centre.

In 2008 Federal president Köhler denied her clemency request - she must serve at least another three years before she might be considered eligible for parole because of the "severity of the crimes."

See Monday, October 01, 2007 Stadtguerilla - Red Army Faction - Stasi - Stockwell ?

There is an intersting on-line archive of RAF documents, statements etc here this includes items from the Struggle Against World Imperialism Organization, a Palestinian group which hijacked a Lufthansa airliner in 1977 in support of the RAF, at the time of the Schleyer kidnapping.

Worth reading is "The Urban Guerrilla Is History..." The Final Communiqué From The Red Army Faction (RAF)

Curiously Jack Prescott, now 64 – a founder member of the Angry Brigade, Britain’s only home-grown urban terrorist group (not counting Gordon's 75% home brew extreme neo-Fascist fundamentalist Muslim terrists) , which carried out 25 attacks on Government buildings (they bombed of the Dept. of Employment and Productivity on the day of a large demonstration against the Industrial Relations Bill) , embassies and corporations cropped up in the UK news as the husband of Lisa Christensen, director of children’s services in Norfolk.