A former member of the extreme-left red army fraction of Germany accused of attempted murder and a series of armed robberies is finally confronted with a trial after more than 30 years on the run.
Daniela Klette, 66, was part of the radical anti-capitalist group known as the RAF or Baader-Meinhof gang, which carried out a series of murders, bombing and abductions, mainly in the 1970s and 80s.
She was arrested in February 2024 in her apartment in Berlin, where the police found a Kalashnikov attack, explosives and large amounts of money. She apparently had hidden in sight for two decades.
At the time of her arrest, the only woman was tagged as 'dangerous' on the most desired list of Europol.
Weeks earlier, the makers of a German 'most wanted' podcast photos of Klette had come across on Facebook when taking capoeira lessons in Berlin, although it is unclear whether this led to its arrest.
The process – which is being held under tight safety in the northern city of Celle – relates to robberies that was said to have committed with two other gang members to finance their lives after the RAF was dissolved in 1998.
After she was held, prosecutors, on suspicion of involvement in three politically motivated attacks, arrested her justice, while the gang was still active.
Named after two of his early leaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the Baader-Meinhof gang came from the radical edge of the student protest movement from the sixties.
Daniela Klette (left), 66, was part of the radical anti-capitalist group, also known as the red army campaign or Baader-Meinhof-Bende
A portrait from 1988 by RAF member Daniela Klette, distributed by the German police in 1993
Kllette is led to a police helicopter in a government center, in Karlsruhe, after her arrest last year
Klette is confronted with one charge for attempted murder during a robbery in Stuhr near Bremen in 2015
The members of the group took on what they saw as the American imperialism and a 'fascist' German state that was still full of former Nazis.
Outside the court, about 50 people joined a solidarity protest, they played punk music and held a banner with the text 'Defringing revolutionary history – freedom for Daniela and all political prisoners'.
Klette was part of a threesome – together with colleague – Viger -Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg – who were active as part of the 'third generation' of the RAF in the eighties and nineties.
After the RAF was dissolved, it was supposed to be right and the two men to have financed their lives by hiding by armed robberies.
The police are still looking for Garweg and Staub, who would now be 56 and 71 respectively if they are still alive.
The process in Celle relates to four attacks on money transporters and nine money matters from stores in which the suspects have gone away with a total of 2.7 million euros ($ 2.9 million), according to public prosecutors.
In many of the robberies, Klette would have followed the escape driver and who has worn a 'realistic -looking' Dummy Bazooka.
She is also confronted with one indictment for attempted murder during a robbery in Stuhr near Bremen in 2015.
Justice officers said on Tuesday that the three suspects 'had gone in an extremely conspiration way', rent cars and apartments under false names and sometimes set vehicles to set their spurs.
Shown: the burnt -out car of Alfred Herrhausen, head of West Deutsche Bank, which was killed in an attack claimed in 1989 by members of the RAF
Non-dated hand-out photos released by the State Office of Criminal Investigations Lower Saxons shows what is supposed to be Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub
The trial will last approximately two years and, according to the court, will hear of 12 witnesses.
Klette reportedly did not impose resistance when she was arrested in her apartment in the Bohemian Bohemian Kreuzberg -district.
According to German media reports, she had used a fake -Italian passport and used the name Claudia Ivone.
Buren told De Bild -newspaper that she had a partner of about the same age as she and she always greeted when she started walking with her dog.
Klette did not have a bank account and probably paid her rent in cash, possibly for a few months or years at a time, according to Der Spiegel Magazine.
Police officers stand for a building that is supposed to be the site where a member of the infamous extreme left Red Army Factation (RAF) was arrested in Berlin last February
The attacks accused of committing in the nineties, which are treated in individual procedures, include an attempt to attack on a Deutsche Bank building in Eschborn, near Frankfurt.
She is also accused of playing a role in a RAF attack from 1991 at the American embassy in Bonn, the German capital at that time.
A third accusation relates to an explosives of 1993 in a prison and then under construction in the German state of Hesse.
