Germany arrests two more suspects in hunt for Red Army fugitives

German police said on Sunday they had arrested two more suspects linked to last week’s arrest of one of the Red Army Faction’s most wanted fugitives, Daniela Klette.

A spokeswoman for the police in the state of Lower Saxony, which is responsible for the case, said authorities are now investigating whether the two men arrested in Berlin are Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, who were wanted in connection with the activities of the Red Army Faction.

The Red Army Faction, originally known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was Germany’s most notorious post-war terrorist group. Mrs Klette, who evaded the police for decadeswas wanted in connection with the bombing of a prison in 1993.

According to police, Ms. Klette, Mr. Staub and Mr. Garweg committed at least 13 violent robberies while in hiding, netting them about two million euros, or about $2.1 million.

Mrs. Klette to arrest made national headlines last week not only because of the criminal group’s sensational past, but also because it had been living virtually in plain sight. Under the name Claudia Ivone, Ms. Klette lived in an apartment in Berlin’s popular Kreuzberg district. The now 65-year-old fugitive had been active in a group practicing the Brazilian martial art capoeira and in a local Afro-Brazilian society, even participating in a popular Berlin street festival and being photographed there.

Security experts have done that questions raised on the effectiveness of the German authorities’ approach to hunting down fugitives, after it emerged that an investigative journalist assisting a German podcast was able to easily identify Ms Klette last year using publicly available facial recognition tools.

In her apartment, Ms. Klette had hidden a grenade, a rocket launcher and a machine gun, police later said.

Shots were fired by security forces during Sunday’s arrests, police said, but no one was injured.

A day earlier, authorities had published photos they believed were of Mr. Staub and Mr. Garweg and that appeared to have been taken in recent years.

Early on Sunday morning, police officers arrested four men and a woman in Berlin’s trendy Friedrichshain district, next to the Kreuzberg district where Ms Klette was found, German news agency DPA said. About 130 police officers and an armored vehicle took part in the operation, the news agency said.

In recent weeks, the prosecutor leading the search had recently launched another public appeal to find the trio, dubbed by the news media as RAF retirees. A prosecutor appeared on the German version of “America’s Most Wanted” to remind people of the search and the fact that there was a reward of 150,000 euros.

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

Ms. Klette was 18 when several of the group’s original members died in a suicide pact in a maximum-security prison in 1977. She, Mr. Staub and Mr. Garweg were part of the third generation of the group, which is believed to have included about 25 active members and hundreds of supporters.

Police say it remains unclear whether the trio had been together until Ms Klette’s arrest. It was more likely that they only came together to commit crimes, a spokesperson for the responsible public prosecutor’s office in Lower Saxony said last week.

Ms. Klette 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 caused about 80 million German marks and subsequently about $45 million in damage.

Authorities say they believe Ms. Klette, Mr. Staub and Mr. Garweg began robbing supermarkets at gunpoint just a year later.

The Red Army Faction was disbanded in 1998.