Fugitive Red Army faction wanted for decades is arrested in Germany

One of Germany’s most wanted fugitives was arrested Monday after living in plain sight in Berlin, just miles from the seat of government that police say she tried to overthrow in the 1990s.

The woman, Daniela Klette, who had evaded police for decades, was wanted in connection with the bombing of a prison in 1993. Police say they believe she was a guerrilla from the Red Army Faction, originally known as the Baader-Meinhof- gang. , Germany’s most notorious post-war terrorist group.

According to police, Ms. Klette and two accomplices, Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, who are also wanted in connection with Red Army Faction activities, committed at least thirteen violent robberies during her time in hiding, netting them approximately two million euros. (just over $2.1 million).

Heavily armed police officers arrested Ms. Klette, 65, in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district in a rental apartment in a simple, beige, eight-story building on a street where the Berlin Wall stood during the Cold War. When she was arrested, they said, she presented an Italian passport with a false name. Police also said they found two ammunition magazines and bullets in the apartment, but no gun.

On Tuesday afternoon, police confirmed the arrest of an elderly man from Ms Klette’s area, but provided no details other than saying his age fit the profile of her alleged accomplices.

The arrest comes after a years-long search in which police sifted through thousands of clues, many of which led nowhere.

“Terrorists can never feel safe, even after 30 years,” Daniela Behrens, the state minister responsible for the police, said at a hastily organized press conference in Hannover on Tuesday.

State police in Lower Saxony, where Hanover is located, are leading the investigation into Ms. Klette and her associates for crimes they have been accused of committing since 1999 to finance their lives in hiding.

“We have stood at several doors to come up with a phrase, in several places, not just in Germany,” said a triumphant Friedo de Vries, the president of the Lower Saxony state police, noting that the police “failures ” had to accept before making the arrest. Federal authorities will be responsible for charging and prosecuting Ms. Klette and her associates for all politically motivated crimes for which the statute of limitations has not yet expired.

The prosecutor leading the search recently launched another major public appeal to find the trio, dubbed by the news media as the RAF retirees. A prosecutor appeared on the German version of “America’s Most Wanted” to remind people of the search and the fact that a reward of 150,000 euros, about $163,000, had been offered.

The tip that led to Monday’s arrest ultimately came in in November, police said. It took the intervening months to ensure that the woman who lived in the Kreuzberg flat, who, as neighbors told the Bild tabloid, tutored children, walked her large white dog daily and was unfailingly polite, was in fact one of the most wanted people in Germany. Ms Klette, who according to the police did not resist arrest, was brought before the judge in Lower Saxony on Tuesday.

The Red Army Faction, or RAF, was active from 1970 to the 1990s and included several separate cells whose attacks on the state continued for decades, ultimately leading to the deaths of 33 people. The guerrillas followed a Marxist-Leninist ideology and targeted American and capitalist interests in West Germany.

Ms Klette, who was just 18 when some of the group’s original members were killed in a suicide pact in a maximum security prison in 1977, was part of the third generation of the RAF, which is believed to have numbered around 25 active members. hundreds of sympathizers.

She is believed to have played a role in the bombing of a newly built section of a prison in Hesse, which resulted in no injuries or deaths, but about 80 million Deutsche Marks, and then about $45 million, in damage.

The RAF was disbanded in 1998.

Authorities say they believe Ms. Klette and her two accomplices began robbing supermarkets at gunpoint just a year later.

On Tuesday, investigators said they were still searching Ms. Klette’s apartment, specifically for clues leading to her two accomplices.

“Despite several setbacks, we have always believed that sooner or later we would be successful,” Mr. De Vries said on Tuesday.