The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1

by J. Smith

  On August 25, the RAF responded by targeting Rebmann’s offices. Peter-Jürgen Boock (the husband of Waltraud Boock) set up an improvised rocket launcher aimed at the Attorney General’s headquarters, but the timing device was not set properly, and it failed to fire. Boock later broke with the RAF and claimed that he had purposefully sabotaged this attack, as his conscience would not allow him to risk the lives of the secretaries and office workers in the building.7 (The editors of this volume assume this statement to be false, along with almost everything else Boock has said.)

  Whatever the truth of the matter, the RAF attempted to put this mishap in the best possible light, issuing a communiqué a week later in which they pretended that the entire exercise had merely been intended as a warning. The guerilla went on to promise that it was more than willing to act should it prove necessary to save the prisoners:

  Should Andreas, Gudrun, and Jan be killed, the apologists for the hard line will find that they are not the only ones with weapons at their disposal. They will find that we are many, and that we have enough love—as well as enough hate and imagination—to use both our weapons and their weapons against them, and that their pain will equal ours.1

  Following Meinhof’s murder, and in the context of the recent hunger strikes and Rebmann’s bloodthirsty statements, the guerilla was clearly concerned that the state might move to kill Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe. This fear was shared by the prisoners themselves, who knew that they might suffer reprisals for the guerilla’s actions.

  Indeed, anticipating such reprisals, and following the breakdown of negotiations between Amnesty International and the Federal Government, the prisoners called off their hunger and thirst strike on September 2. In a short statement, Jan-Carl Raspe explained that the attacks on Ponto and Rebmann had created an environment in which the prisoners had become hostages and the state was ready and willing to kill them to set an example.2

  The failed Ponto kidnapping had been intended to be the first of a two-pronged action to put pressure on the West German bourgeoisie to force the state to free the prisoners. Despite their failure to take Ponto alive, it was decided to follow through on the second part of this plan.

  On September 5, the RAF’s “Siegfried Hausner Commando” kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer. His car and police escort were forced to a stop by a baby stroller that was left out in the middle of the road, at which point they were ambushed by guerillas who killed his chauffeur, Heinz Marcisz, and three police officers—Reinhold Brändle, Helmut Ulmer and Roland Pieler—before making their getaway.

  A note received soon after warned that, “The federal government must take steps to assure that all aspects of the manhunt cease—or we will immediately shoot Schleyer without even engaging in negotiations for his freedom.”

  Schleyer was the most powerful businessman in West Germany at the time. Like Ponto, he was a frequent figure on television representing the ruling class point of view. He was the president of both the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie (Federal Association of German Industrialists) and the Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände (Federal Association of German Employers), and had a reputation as an aggressive opponent of any workers’ demands.3 As a veteran of Hitler’s SS, he was a perfect symbol of the integration of former Nazis into the postwar power structure.4

  Hanns Martin Schleyer in captivity. The RAF had considered having him hold a sign with his SS number and the caption “A Prisoner of His Own History,” but quickly rejected this idea. Not only did the guerillas have no wish to inflict needless humiliation, but they were also aware that their captive was already unpopular in West Germany and feared he would have less exchange value if he was debased further.

  As the guerilla would later explain:

  We hoped to confront the SPD with the decision of whether to exchange these two individuals who embody the global power of FRG capital in a way that few others do.

  Ponto for his international financial policy (revealing how all the German banks, especially his own Dresdner Bank, work to support reactionary regimes in developing countries and also the role of FRG financial policy as a tool to control European integration) and Schleyer for the national economic policy (the big trusts, corporatism, the FRG as an international model of social peace).

  They embodied the power within the state which the SPD must respect if it wishes to stay in power.1

  The attempted Ponto kidnapping may have ended in failure, yet it was felt that the plan could not be called off, that lives were at stake: “the prisoners had reached a point where we could no longer put off an action to liberate them. The prisoners were on a thirst strike and Gudrun was dying.”2

  Within a day of Schleyer’s kidnapping, the commando demanded the release of eleven prisoners—including Ensslin, Raspe, and Baader—and safe passage to a country of their choosing. This demand was reiterated on September 6, as the guerilla suspected state security of not relaying their first communiqué to the proper authorities.

  Pastor Martin Niemöller and the Swiss human rights advocate Denis Payot (whom the RAF mistakenly thought held a position in the United Nations) were to accompany the prisoners to their final destination. The commando further demanded that the prisoners be given 100,000 DM each ($44,000), and that their entire communiqué be read on Tagesschau, a nightly current affairs television program.

  In discussions with state representatives, the prisoners promised that they would not return to the FRG or participate in future armed actions if exiled. Nevertheless, the government issued a statement indicating that it would not release them under any circumstances.

  Government officials declared a “supra-legal state of emergency,” and Schmidt convened the Crisis Management Team, which had first been established in 1975 during the Lorenz action and then during the RAF’s Stockholm siege. Over the next weeks, this team served to concentrate all decision-making powers in the hands of the executive:

  Arguing that each party was represented on the committee, the need to consult parliament in matters of national importance was effectively curtailed. For the length of the “German Autumn” the crisis management team was the ruling body, responsible for all negotiations with the terrorists and the enactment of security measures.3

  One of the first measures taken was a “voluntary” news ban, immediately followed by a total Kontaktsperre (Contact Ban) against all political prisoners. As its name implies, the Contact Ban deprived the prisoners of any contact with each other, as well as with the outside world. All visits, including those with lawyers and family members, were forbidden. The prisoners were also denied any access to mail, newspapers, magazines, television, or radio. In short, they were placed in 100% individual isolation,4 in what has been described as a case of “counter-kidnapping” by the state.5

  While the Contact Ban was initially not sanctioned by law, parliament obliged by rushing through the appropriate legislation in record time (just three days) and with only four votes against.6 The justification offered was a claim that the prisoners had directed the kidnapping from within their cells with the help of the lawyers. As evidence, police claimed to have found a hand drawn map used in the kidnapping in Armin Newerla’s car on September 5.7

  On September 9, Agence France Presse’s Bonn office received an ultimatum from the Siegfried Hausner Commando, setting a 1:00 PM deadline for the release of the prisoners. The state countered with a proposal that Denis Payot act as a go-between.

  Secret negotiations began the same day, the RAF repeatedly—and less and less convincingly—warning of dire consequences if the prisoners were not immediately released, while the state very successfully stalled for time. The SPD’s Minister in Charge of Special Affairs, Hans Jürgen Wischnewski, who had a good reputation from having acted as a gobetween with various Third World liberation movements,1 began to travel to various foreign capitals looking for a “progressive regime” which might take the prisoners. Or so the RAF was meant to believe: according to political scientist (and former counterinsu
rgency expert) Richard Clutterbuck, Wischnewski’s trips were a careful ploy, picked up by the media as a sign that the government was willing to give in despite Schmidt’s official “no-deals” policy. Clutterbuck credits the media reports to this effect for the fact that the RAF did not kill Schleyer when their first ultimatums expired.2

  The Minister in Charge of Special Affairs traveled first to Algeria and Libya, then South Yemen and Iraq, and finally to Vietnam. Though their refusal was not immediately made public, none of these countries would accept the prisoners—a decision that in the case of the PDRY was informed by the way the FRG had reneged on its promises following the Lorenz prisoner exchange.3

  Meanwhile, the hunt for the guerilla and their captive continued.

  On September 19, RAF members Knut Folkerts and Brigitte Mohnhaupt narrowly escaped from Dutch police after the manager of a car rental agency in Utrecht became suspicious of their identification papers. They got away and managed to rent a car at another agency, but when they returned it four days later, the police were lying in wait. By the time the bullets had stopped flying, Folkerts was in custody, two cops were wounded and a third, officer Arie Kranenburg, was dead. Mohnaupt managed to get away.4

  The search for Schleyer was extended to Holland, but to no avail.

  On September 30, defense attorney Ardnt Müller was arrested. Accused of having worked with Newerla and defense attorney Klaus Croissant to recruit for the RAF, he was imprisoned under Contact Ban conditions. The arrest was buttressed by the claim that on September 2, Müller had used Newerla’s car, in which the aforementioned map had been found.

  On October 7, the thirty-second day of the kidnapping, newspapers in France and Germany received a letter from Schleyer, accompanied by a photo, decrying the “indecisiveness” of the authorities.

  On October 13, with negotiations deadlocked, a new development moved the already intense confrontation to an entirely different level, as a Palestinian group intervened in solidarity with the RAF. The “Struggle Against World Imperialism Organization”—also known as the Martyr Halimeh Commando—hijacked a Lufthansa airliner traveling from Majorca, Spain to Frankfurt, West Germany. This was actually a PFLP (EO) commando, led by Zohair Youssef Akache.5

  Eighty-five passengers and five crew members were taken hostage.

  At 4:00 PM, the airliner landed in Rome to refuel and to issue the commando’s demands. These were the release of the eleven RAF prisoners, and also two Palestinians being held in Turkey, Mahdi Muhammed and Hussein Muhammed al Rashid, who were serving life sentences for an attempted hijacking at Istanbul airport in 1976, in which four people had been killed.

  Led by Waddi Haddad, the PFLP (EO) had split from the more well known PFLP in the early seventies. It was the PFLP (EO) that had worked with the RZ’s international wing during the Entebbe hijacking a year earlier, and during the attack on the OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in 1975.6 Both of these actions had been viewed negatively by the RAF prisoners, and yet they had never criticized them publicly.

  It remains unclear how the Palestinian guerillas came to be involved in the RAF’s 1977 campaign. Haddad was killed by the Mossad soon afterwards, and all accounts seem to come solely from the German side; in evaluating them, it should be kept in mind that this entire operation was later seen as a serious error by the RAF and its supporters.

  Some say that faced with the increasingly unpromising situation in the FRG, with the government obviously stalling for time while negotiating in bad faith, Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Peter-Jürgen Boock had flown to Baghdad to enlist Haddad’s aid; according to some versions, they agreed to pay $15 million for it.1 According to other reports, it was Haddad who contacted the RAF, using the RZ international wing’s Johannes Weinrich as a go-between.2 According to Stefan Wisniewski, one of those involved in the Schleyer kidnapping,

  The Palestinians had their own interest in such an action. Of course, getting the prisoners out, there was also the issue of two Palestinian prisoners who were sitting in a Turkish prison, but there was also something else altogether. They said to themselves, “When a country like the Federal Republic, the most important country in the European Community, is involved in a confrontation that the entire world is watching, then we have an opportunity to introduce our concerns.”3

  Regardless of these details, it was a plan agreed to by the RAF in the field, several of whose members had spent time in a PFLP (EO) training camp in South Yemen.4 The 1976-1977 wave of combatants had moved to the international terrain, in a way the RAF had never done before.5

  Not only that, but they had sanctioned an action in which civilians were being used as hostages—another unprecedented step which the guerilla would eventually see an error.6 Suddenly, it was not just one man, a former Nazi and current representative of the West German ruling class, who was being held hostage, but a plane full of ordinary people. A quiet horror descended, not only on many supporters of the guerilla, but on some RAF prisoners, too. As Karl-Heinz Dellwo recalls:

  This hostage-taking completely threw aside what Gudrun had called “the moral ticket.” Holger Meins’ last letter closed with the appeal “Serve the People,” and here the people were being attacked.7

  Furthermore, the SAWIO was a Palestinian commando acting primarily to demand the release of First World revolutionaries, providing more evidence that the events of 77 were no longer even orbiting the realities of the West German left, and that the organic relationship the RAF founders had enjoyed with the broader movement in 72 was now far in the past. Andreas Baader is reported to have said as much to government representatives at Stammheim, stating that the prisoners did not condone operations like the skyjacking which target innocent civilians, but that the “brutality” of the latest wave of combatants had been made inevitable by the government’s attacks.8

  It is horrible to note that the Palestinians were risking their lives—and as we shall see, most of them would pay that price—for West German prisoners who disapproved of the whole operation in the first place. This was a sign that the guerillas in the field had miscalculated in more ways than one.

  Nevertheless, none of the RAF prisoners publicly disavowed this action, any misgivings tempered with the hope that this might swing the balance in their favor. Indeed, previous opinion polls had shown 60% opposed and 22% in favor of yielding to the RAF’s demands; once the airliner was seized, opinion became evenly split on the matter.9

  The plane flew to Cyprus and from there to the Gulf, where it landed first in Bahrain and then, at 6:00 AM on October 14, in Dubai.

  Within a few hours, Denis Payot announced receipt of a communiqué setting a deadline of 8:00 AM October 16 for all the demands to be met, “if a bloodbath was to be avoided.”10 The communiqué, signed by both the SAWIO and the Siegfried Hausner Commando, was accompanied by a videotape of Schleyer.

  At 5:47 PM, the West German government released a statement specifying that they intended to do everything possible to find “a reasonable and humanitarian solution,” so as to save the lives of the hostages. That evening Wischnewski left Bonn for Dubai: he was no longer traveling to arrange sanctuary for the prisoners, or even to pretend to do so, but rather to negotiate the terms of an intervention.

  On October 15, Denis Payot announced that he had an “extremely important and urgent” message for the Siegfried Hausner Commando from the federal government in Bonn. Wischnewski, on site in Dubai, announced that there would be no military intervention. That evening, West German television broke its self-imposed silence (which had been requested by the state) for the first time since the kidnapping, showing a thirty second clip from the Schleyer video received the day before.

  As another day drew to an end, the West German government publicly announced that Somalia, South Yemen, and Vietnam had all refused to accept the RAF prisoners and the two Palestinians held in Turkey.

  At 8:00 AM on October 16, the forty-first day since the kidnapping of Schleyer, the deadline established in the October 14 ultimatum passed. In Geneva
, Payot once again announced that he had received an “extremely important and urgent” message from Bonn. At 10:43 AM, the Turkish Minister of Finance and Defense announced that Turkey was prepared to release the two Palestinians should the West German government request it.

  At 11:21 AM, the airliner left Dubai.

  At noon, the second ultimatum passed.

  At 2:38 PM, government spokesman Klaus Bölling declared that a “realistic” solution was still being sought. Seven hours later, a plane landed in Saudi Arabian city of Jiddah, carrying Wischnewski and the GSG-9, the special operations unit that had been established just four years earlier following the Black September attack at the Munich Olympics.

  That night, the plane carrying the hijackers and their hostages was forced to make an emergency landing in South Yemen to refuel. The PDRY’s military had blocked off the airstrip with tanks, not wanting anything to do with the skyjacking, but the plane set down on a sand track beside the runway itself.1

  Finally refueled the next morning, the plane took off, landing in Mogadishu, Somalia at 3:20 AM German time on October 17. An hour later the dead body of Flight Captain Jürgen Schumann, who had been sending out coded messages about the situation on board, was pushed out the door.2

  The hijackers announced they were extending their deadline to 2:00 PM, German time.

  At 1:30 PM Bölling held a press conference, during which he insisted that the goal of the authorities, “has been and remains saving the lives of the hostages.”3

  At 2:00 PM, yet another deadline passed. Minutes earlier, the plane carrying Wischnewski and the GSG-9 had landed in Mogadishu.

  At the same time, in the Federal Republic, Schleyer’s family released a statement announcing their willingness to negotiate directly with the kidnappers.

  At 8:20 PM, Bölling issued a statement that the “terrorists” had no option but to surrender. Twenty minutes later, the West German government requested an international news blackout of developments at the airport in Mogadishu.