The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History

by J. Smith

  During this same period, a range of measures were taken against the prisoners. Cells were routinely raided and papers relating to their trials seized. Even their lawyers came under attack, accused of supporting the guerilla and in some cases barred from conducting their defense. All of this took legal form when the Lex Baader-Meinhof, or “Baader-Meinhof Laws,” became constitutional amendments in 1975. In particular, §138a-d allowed for the exclusion of any lawyers deemed to be “forming a criminal association with the defendant,” while §231a and §231b allowed for trials to continue in the absence of a defendant if the reason for this absence was found to be of the defendant’s own doing—a stipulation directly aimed at the prisoners’ effective use of hunger strikes.29 Under §146, it was prohibited to present a joint defense, even though many of the prisoners were facing joint trials. Surveillance of defense correspondence was sanctioned by §148 and §148a, while the previously held right of the accused and defense lawyers to issue statements under §275a was withdrawn.30 By 1976, these were supplemented with §129a—an antiterrorist subsection to §129 which dealt with criminal organizations—and §88a, criminalizing all those who “produce, distribute, publicly display, and advertise materials that recommend unlawful acts—such as disturbing the peace in special (e.g., armed) cases, murder, manslaughter, robbery, extortion, arson, and the use of explosives.”31

  Concrete form—literally—was given to this repressive atmosphere with the construction of a special “terrorist-proof” bunker, for holding the “RAF ringleaders” trial in the regular Stuttgart courthouse was declared to be out of the question. This dungeon-courtroom adjacent to Stammheim prison came equipped with antiaircraft defense against helicopter attack, listening devices sown in the ground around the building, scores of closed-circuit TV cameras, and an underground tunnel to the prison so that the defendants could be brought to and from court without ever appearing in the open.32

  What came to be known as the Stammheim trial—where Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Ulrike Meinhof would face charges relating to the May Offensive—did not start until 1975, three years after the defendants had been arrested and barely a year after Meins had died on hunger strike. (Had he not died, he too would have stood trial there.) Due to the attacks on sympathetic lawyers, not all of the defendants had legal representation of their choosing, and it would later be revealed that one of the judges was leaking court documents to a conservative newspaper throughout the proceedings. Despite the state’s assertions that it held no political prisoners, there was never any pretence that this was a mere “criminal” case, nor was there much effort put into even pretending that it would be a fair trial.

  This already bad situation got dramatically worse on May 9, 1976, just as the proceedings were entering their most critical phase. On that day, the state announced that Ulrike Meinhof had died in her cell, having apparently committed suicide by hanging. The BKA circulated excerpts from notes that had been found during cell raids months earlier, in order to create the impression that there had been a falling out, with Meinhof on the one side and Baader and Ensslin on the other. The prisoners, and most of the left, immediately denounced the suicide story as impossible, and did not hesitate to accuse the state of killing the woman who many viewed as the RAF’s chief theoretician.

  In Meinhof’s own words, part of the court record the day before she was found dead, “It is, of course, a police tactic in counterinsurgency conflicts, in guerilla warfare, to take out the leaders.”33

  Her sister Wienke Zitzlaff similarly rejected the state’s version of events. “My sister once told me very clearly she never would commit suicide,” she remembered. “She said if it ever were reported that she killed herself then I would know she had been murdered.”34

  It is impossible to overstate the effect that Meinhof’s death had on the left, both within the FRG and throughout Western Europe. An open letter signed by various intellectuals—including Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir—compared it to the worst crimes of the Nazi era. Social and political prisoners in Berlin-Tegel Prison held a three-day hunger strike, and in Paris the offices of two West German steel companies were bombed, as was the German Cultural Center in Toulouse and the German Academy and the West German Travel Bureau in Rome. The product of armed movements indigenous to France and Italy, these attacks bear witness to the solidarity that existed between the various combatants across Western Europe, and to the prominent position that the RAF, and Meinhof in particular, held in the mental universe of those others who had joined them in taking up the gun.

  Meanwhile, back in the FRG, bombs went off in Munich outside the U.S. Armed Forces radio station and in a shopping center in the middle of the night, as thousands took part in demonstrations across the country.

  Fighting was particularly fierce in Frankfurt; according to one police spokesperson, “the most brutal in the post-war history of the city.”35 Following a rally, hundreds of people rampaged through the downtown area, breaking the windows of American Express and the America House cultural center, as well as setting up barricades and defending them against police water cannons with molotov cocktails. Twelve people were arrested and seven police officers were injured, two of them seriously when their car was set ablaze. (The repression that followed, and the Frankfurt scene’s inability to come to grips with the consequences of such near-lethal levels of violence, would signal the beginning of a period of decline for the antiauthoritarian left in that city, with far-reaching consequences.)36

  Police beat protester at Frankfurt demonstration following Meinhof’s death

  On May 15, some seven thousand people, many with their faces blackened and heads covered to avoid identification by the police, attended Meinhof’s funeral in West Berlin. Her sister requested that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the prisoners’ support campaign, and when they left the cemetery mourners joined with demonstrators in downtown West Berlin and at the Moabit courthouse where Meinhof had been sentenced two years earlier, in a previous trial. That same day there were more bomb attacks in the FRG and abroad.

  This was followed three days later by another demonstration of eight thousand people in West Berlin, during which several police officers were injured. Bombs continued to go off in France, cars with German license plates and the offices of a right-wing newspaper being targeted. On June 2, the U.S. Army Headquarters and U.S. Officers’ Club in Frankfurt were bombed. This last attack was carried out by the “Ulrike Meinhof Commando” of the Revolutionary Cells. (The RZ were the third major West German guerilla tendency; see pages 69–74.)

  Finally, an International Investigatory Commission into the Death of Ulrike Meinhof (Internationale Untersuchungskommission zum Tod von Ulrike Meinhof) was formed: it took three years to release its findings, but in 1978 it announced it had found evidence Meinhof had been murdered—a claim that the state rejected out of hand as a fabrication by RAF supporters, designed to manipulate the credulous. Nevertheless, the many inconsistencies and troubling details surrounding Meinhof’s death have never been adequately addressed or explained by those who reject the murder thesis.37

  Certainly, at the time, much of the radical left believed that Meinhof had been killed, and this simply added to the already overwhelming sense of urgency.

  1977: THE PRISONERS’ STRUGGLE HEATS UP

  The prisoners’ struggle was to remain of great importance to the RAF throughout its existence, but never more so than in 1977.

  On March 29 of that year, prisoners from the RAF embarked upon their fourth hunger strike, demanding treatment as guaranteed by the Geneva Convention, association in groups of no less than fifteen, an end to isolation, and an international investigation into the deaths of RAF prisoners38 in custody. Initially, thirty-five participated, but soon the number of prisoners refusing food surpassed one hundred, with some even refusing liquids.

  The guerilla was not going to let the prisoners wage this battle on their own. On April 7, as Attorney General Siegfried Buback was wa
iting at a traffic light, two individuals on a motorcycle pulled up alongside his Mercedes. Suddenly, one of them pulled out a submachine gun and opened fire, riddling the car with bullets.

  As head of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (BAW), Buback bore direct responsibility for the prison conditions which had already claimed the lives of Ulrike Meinhof, Siegfried Hausner, and Holger Meins; commenting on the dirty tricks the state used to clamp down on the guerilla, he is quoted as having said that, “State security is given life by those who are committed to it. People like Herold and myself, we always find a way.” It was in the name of the “Ulrike Meinhof Commando” that the RAF issued a communiqué claiming responsibility for his assassination, remarking that, “For ‘protagonists of the system’ like Buback, history always finds a way.”39

  Attorney General Siegfried Buback, April 7, 1977

  Wanted poster seeking information about Günter Sonnenberg, Christian Klar, and Knut Folkerts, the initial suspects in the killing of Attorney General Siegfried Buback.

  Within a day, police announced that three suspects were being sought in connection with the attack. Despite the fact that an eyewitness described the shooter as petite and female, the BKA investigators concentrated on three men: Günter Sonnenberg, Knut Folkerts, and Christian Klar, all of whom had passed from the prisoner support scene to the RAF in the months following Meinhof’s death.40 The main evidence against them seems to have been that before going underground, they had all lived in Karlsruhe, the city in which the attack took place. A bounty of 200,000 DM ($88,000) was offered for their capture.

  The hunger strike continued, consolidating support. Soon relatives of the prisoners began a solidarity strike, and on April 17, Peter’s Church in Frankfurt was occupied and turned into a hunger strike information center. As the number of prisoners refusing food reached one hundred and twenty, more outside supporters began a second solidarity hunger strike in a Bielefeld Church. On April 27, relatives of political prisoners held a demonstration at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva demanding the application of the Geneva Convention. The next day, Amnesty International added its voice to that of eighty clergymen, one hundred and twenty-eight U.S. lawyers, one hundred French and Belgian lawyers, and twenty-three English lawyers, all calling for the state to address the prisoners’ demands.

  The snowballing support was effective: on April 30, a government spokesperson announced that the prisoners would be granted limited association. The seventh floor of Stammheim prison was soon being renovated to allow up to sixteen prisoners to be housed together. Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Irmgard Möller (who had been transferred to Stammheim following Meinhof’s death) would soon be joined by RAF prisoners Ingrid Schubert, Helmut Pohl, Wolfgang Beer, and Werner Hoppe.41

  In response to this victory, the prisoners agreed to end their hunger strike.

  Then, on May 3, RAF members Günter Sonnenberg and Verena Becker were captured in the German town of Singen, near the Swiss border. A woman had tipped off the police after spotting the two as they sat in a café: she recognized Sonnenberg from the wanted posters that had gone up throughout Western Europe after the Buback assassination. When the police arrived on the scene, the guerillas tried to play it cool, innocently pretending to have left their ID papers in their car. While being escorted from the café—presumably to retrieve these phantom ID papers—they drew their weapons and shot the two cops, commandeered a car, and took off. Pursued by squad cars alerted to the incident, they took a wrong turn and ended up in a field, at which point they ditched their vehicle and tried to escape on foot.

  As they fled, Becker dropped her submachine gun—as it would turn out, the same weapon that had been used to kill Buback. A cop picked up the weapon and fired: Becker was hit in her leg and Sonnenberg in his torso and head. His injuries were such that police had difficulty identifying him, despite the fact that his face was on wanted posters across Europe, and he would remain in a coma for four weeks. While he did survive, he suffered brain damage and initially could not remember his own past, or even how to speak, and to this day remains prone to epileptic seizures.

  While he was still in the hospital intensive care unit, sedated, and unable to grasp his surroundings or speak coherently, Judge Horst Kuhn had him interrogated, taking note of each grunt as evidence to be used against him in his trial.42 Starting in 1979, Sonnenberg’s release would be a consistent demand of every RAF prisoners’ hunger strike, and of the guerilla itself. Nevertheless, he would remain in prison until 1992, spending much of that time in isolation.

  Günter Sonnenberg

  The next attack occurred on July 30, as three RAF members, including Susanne Albrecht, came with flowers to the door of Jürgen Ponto, chairman of the board of directors of the Dresdner Bank and one of the most important financiers in West Germany. Ponto had direct ties to many Third World governments and had served as an advisor to South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime. He was also Albrecht’s sister’s godfather, and a close friend of her parents. The guerilla attempted to abduct him, but when he resisted they opened fire, shooting him five times. As Albrecht had been recognized by Ponto’s wife, she signed her name to the communiqué for this action.

  On August 8, the RAF prisoners who had been moved to Stammheim just one month earlier were transferred back to Hamburg. The precise excuse used was a “fight” with guards: essentially a set-up whereby the guards provoked an incident and used it as an excuse to attack and beat the prisoners. It appeared that Buback’s replacement Kurt Rebmann was reversing his previous decision to grant association. Baader, Raspe, Ensslin, and Möller were once again alone on the seventh floor of Stammheim prison.

  In reaction to these machinations and to the attack on Ponto, all RAF prisoners went on hunger strike, some escalating to a thirst strike almost immediately. Within days force-feeding had begun: a sadistic penal tactic whereby prisoners were drugged, strapped down to a table, and had a pipe rammed down their throat for hours at a time. It was not meant to save the lives of the hunger strikers, but was another form of torture which the state had come to depend on in its struggle against the prisoners. Holger Meins, for instance, who had died during the 1974 hunger strike, had been force-fed for weeks. As he wrote shortly before his death:

  A red stomach pipe (not a tube) is used, about the thickness of a middle finger (in my case between the joints). It is greased, but doesn’t manage to go down without causing me to gag, because it is only between 1 and 3 mm narrower than the digestive tract (this can only be avoided if one makes a swallowing motion and remains completely still). The slightest irritation when the pipe is introduced causes gagging and nausea and the cramping of the chest and stomach muscles, setting off a chain reaction of extremely intense convulsions throughout the body, causing one to buck against the pipe. The more extreme and the longer this lasts, the worse it is.43

  In the words of Margrit Schiller, a RAF member who had been captured in 1974: “I was force-fed every day for a month. Each time was like a rape. Each time, I felt totally humiliated and destroyed.”44

  Defense attorneys Armin Newerla and Arndt Müller began organizing public support for the striking prisoners and came under heavy police surveillance as a result. On August 15, the lawyers’ offices were firebombed, almost certainly with the collusion of the police who had them staked out twenty-four hours a day. Newerla was subsequently arrested when copies of a left-wing magazine were found in his car; he was charged with “supporting a criminal organization” under §129a. Seeing the writing on the wall, defense attorney Klaus Croissant had already fled the country to France, where he requested political asylum. (Croissant had been harassed for years as a result of his tireless work on behalf of RAF defendants.)

  The new attorney general staked out the hard-line position that he would be remembered for. “I know that the population is not at all interested if these people go on hunger and thirst strikes,” Rebmann told the press. “The population wants these people to be hit hard, jus
t as hard as they have earned with their brutal deed.”

  He was asked about the possibility of prisoners dying. “That is always a bad thing,” he answered, “but it would be the consequence which has been made clear to them and their lawyers and which is clear to them. The conditions of imprisonment don’t justify such a strike; they are doing very well considering the circumstances.”45

  On August 25, the RAF responded by targeting Rebmann’s offices. An improvised rocket launcher was aimed at the attorney general’s headquarters, but the timing device was not set properly, so it failed to fire.

  The RAF attempted to put this mishap in the best possible light, issuing a communiqué a week later in which they claimed that the entire exercise had merely been intended for show. The guerilla went on to warn 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 out that they are not the only ones with an arsenal at their disposal. They will find out 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.46

  The guerilla was clearly concerned, following Meinhof’s death, and given Rebmann’s bloodthirsty statements, 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 RAF’s actions.

  As such, 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 on Rebmann’ s office had created an environment in which the prisoners had become hostages of a state that was ready and willing to kill them to set an example.47