by J. Smith
June 14, 1976
Twenty-four attorneys for political prisoners release a statement protesting the murder of Ulrike Meinhof, as well as isolation and torture.
June 16, 1976
Five former intelligence agents, including Winslow Peck (National Security Agency - Airforce), Gary P. Thomas (Military Intelligence) and Philip Agee (CIA), testify in Stammheim about the use of West German territory by the U.S. for the Vietnamese War effort.
June 18, 1976
The office of Klaus Jürgen Langner, Margrit Schiller’s attorney, is firebombed. Seven people are injured.
June 24, 1976
The West German parliament passes legislation integrating §129a, which illegalizes “supporting or participating in a terrorist organization,” into the Basic Law.
June 30, 1976
Attorney Klaus Croissant is banned from taking on any more political cases.
July 1976
The influential French monthly newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique interviews the RAF prisoners and their attorneys.
July 7, 1976
RAF member Monika Berberich and 2JM members, Juliane Plambeck, Gabriele Rollnick, and Inge Viett overpower a guard and scale the wall, escaping from the Lehrter Women’s Prison in West Berlin.
July 16, 1976
Attorney Klaus Croissant is arrested and charged with supporting a criminal organization after he announces the formation of an International Commission into the death of Ulrike Meinhof.
July 21, 1976
Rolf Pohle, one of the prisoners exchanged for Peter Lorenz in 1975, is arrested by West German police in Athens, Greece.
RAF member Monika Berberich, who escaped from a West Berlin prison with three other women on July 7, is rearrested.
August 18–19, 1976
Left bookstores and publishers in West Berlin, Hamburg, Bochum, Essen, Cologne, Heidelberg, Tübingen, and Munich are raided in connection with §88a. Books and magazines are seized and a Bochum book dealer is arrested and held for a week.
July 22, 1976
RAF prisoner Brigitte Mohnhaupt testifies at the Stammheim trial refuting most of Gerhard Müller’s testimony.
October 1, 1976
In spite of protests, Greece, under extreme pressure including threats of economic sanctions, extradites Rolf Pohle to West Germany.
November 10, 1976
Ministers from nineteen EEC countries establish the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism.
November 30, 1976
RAF members Siegfried Haag and Roland Mayer are arrested on the Frankfurt-Kassel highway. Chief Federal Prosecutor, Siegfried Buback, claims that they were in possession of a variety of weapons at the time of the arrest. Attorney Klaus Croissant is denied the right to represent Haag.
December 1976
A section of the RZ releases an open letter criticizing the RAF’s strategy and dogmatism.
December 8, 1976
Attorney Brigitte Tilgener is denied the right to represent RAF prisoner Siegfried Haag.
December 10, 1976
The BAW accuses attorney Hans-Christian Ströbele of supporting a terrorist organization and applies for a Berufsverbot against him.
December 13, 1976
Attorneys Klaus Croissant and Hans-Christian Ströbele are denied the right to represent RAF prisoner Brigitte Mohnhaupt.
December 14, 1976
RAF member Waltraud Boock is arrested in Vienna, Austria following a bank robbery.
December 15, 1976
One of attorney Klaus Croissant’s secretaries is offered several thousand DM by the Verfassungsschutz for copies of legal notes and clients names.
December 17, 1976
There is a bomb attack against the Vienna, Austria Police Information Centre demanding the release of RAF member Waltraud Boock. This is followed by two bomb threats with the same demand.
December 21, 1976
Attorney General Siegfried Buback requests that attorney Jürgen Laubacher be denied the right to represent RAF prisoner Siegfried Haag, because he has previously represented political prisoners.
1977
January 10, 1977
RAF prisoner Monika Berberich responds critically to the RZ’s open letter of December 1976, which criticized the RAF’s strategy and dogmatism.
January 12, 1977
Defense attorney Otto Schily launches a motion of non-confidence against Theodor Prinzing, the judge in the Stammheim trial, when it is discovered that he has leaked the trial tapes to the media, in spite of the fact that it is illegal to make them public.
January 23, 1977
Chief Judge Theodor Prinzing is expelled from the Stammheim trial for partiality following eighty-five legal requests for his removal.
January 27, 1977
Seventeen states sign the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism in Strasbourg, France, committing them to a common struggle against terrorism.
February 4, 1977
In Vienna, RAF member Waltraud Boock is sentenced to fifteen years.
February 8, 1977
RAF member Brigitte Mohnhaupt is released from prison and immediately goes back underground.
March 17, 1977
The state admits to having bugged the cells of seven RAF prisoners, and to having listened in on the prisoners’ conversations with their attorneys. They claim, however, to have only used the bugs briefly on two occasions, during the Stockholm crisis of 1975, and briefly on one occasion in 1976. They also claim to have destroyed the tapes immediately afterwards.
The media spreads rumours that the RAF is planning to kidnap children from playgrounds.
March 29–April 30, 1977
RAF and 2JM prisoners begin the 4th collective hunger strike, demanding POW status under the Geneva Convention, association in groups of no less than fifteen, abolition of isolation, an international investigation into the deaths of Holger Meins, Siegfried Hausner, and Ulrike Meinhof, and an end to psychological warfare through false actions and communiqués. Thirty-five prisoners participate from the outset, including Waltraud Boock in Vienna, but soon one hundred prisoners are hunger striking against brutality and force-feeding.
April 7, 1977
The RAF’s Ulrike Meinhof Commando assassinates Attorney General Siegfried Buback, riddling his car with submachine gun fire, also killing his driver, Wolfgang Göbel, and a bodyguard, Georg Wurster.
RAF prisoners are searched and the Contact Ban is applied.
April 14, 1977
The head of the BKA, Horst Herold, claims that there are between 400 and 500 terrorists with 4,000 to 5,000 sympathizers in West Germany.
April 26, 1977
Attorneys Otto Schily and Hans-Heinz Heldmann temporarily halt their pleas in the Stammheim trial to protest the bugging of their meetings with witnesses.
April 28, 1977
The Stuttgart OLG finds RAF members Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader guilty of six murders and thirty-four attempted murders in connection with six bomb attacks. They are sentenced to life plus fifteen years. The so-called Stammheim trial lasts two years, including 192 days of testimony and costs $15 million.
April 30, 1977
The Minister of Justice for Baden-Wurttemburg rules that the RAF prisoners’ demands for association must be met. In response to this gesture, the prisoners end their hunger strike. Shortly thereafter work begins on the seventh floor of Stammheim to allow the association of sixteen prisoners.
May 2, 1977
The weekly news journal Spiegel prints poll results claiming 50% of West German citizens want the reinstatement of the dead wing in prisons. Thirty-five thousand people sign a petition to this effect.
May 3, 1977
RAF members Günter Sonnenberg and Verena Becker, formerly of the 2JM, are arrested in the German-Swiss border town of Singen. Sonnenberg is shot in the head and Becker in the leg. Sonnenberg is suspected in the Buback assassination and Becker has been wanted ever since she was freed
through the Lorenz kidnapping.
May 5, 1977
RAF supporters Uwe Folkerts and Johannes Thimme are arrested in connection with the Buback assassination.
May 13, 1977
RAF member Irene Goergens is released from prison.
June 2, 1977
The Kaiserslautern LG sentences RAF members Manfred Grashof and Klaus Jünschke to life in prison. Wolfgang Grundmann is sentenced to four years.
RAF members Verena Becker and Sabine Schmitz start hunger strike for association with prisoners in Stammheim.
June 22, 1977
RAF prisoners Hanna Krabbe, Bernd Rössner, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, and Lutz Taufer begin hunger strike for association with the prisoners in Stammheim.
RAF members Sabine Schmitz and Verena Becker break their hunger strike when they are assured that they will be allowed association with other RAF prisoners.
June 27, 1977
The Stuttgart OLG bars attorney Klaus Croissant from representing defendants in trials related to state security.
July 1, 1977
RAF members Willi-Peter Stoll and Knut Folkerts rob a gun store in Frankfurt, making off with fifteen revolvers and three pistols. Kurt Rebmann becomes Siegfried Buback’s successor as Attorney General.
July 7, 1977
RAF prisoners Helmut Pohl, Wolfgang Beer, and Werner Hoppe are moved to Stammheim.
July 8, 1977
Attorney Klaus Croissant, facing increasing harassment, flees to Paris, and holds a press conference at which he requests political asylum.
July 12, 1977
Attorney Klaus Croissant files a formal request for political asylum in France.
July 16, 1977
West Germany requests that France extradite Klaus Croissant.
July 20, 1977
The Düsseldorf OLG sentences RAF members Hanna Krabbe, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Lutz Taufer, and Bernd Rössner to two life sentences for their respective roles in the April 24, 1975, Stockholm Embassy action.
July 27, 1977
RAF prisoner Waltraud Boock begins a hunger strike for application of the Geneva Convention governing POWS and for association with RAF prisoners in Stammheim.
July 30, 1977
Jürgen Ponto, the President of West Germany’s largest bank, the Dresdner Bank, is shot and killed in his home. Susanne Albrecht, who is the sister of Ponto’s goddaughter, is recognized. She goes underground along with Angelika Speitel, Silke Maier-Witt, and Siegrid Sternebeck. Immediately following the shooting RAF prisoners are searched and the Contact Ban is applied.
August 8, 1977
A special unit brutally breaks up the month-old Stammheim group, marking the renewal of draconian prison conditions.
August 9–September 2, 1977
RAF prisoners participate in the 5th collective hunger strike in response to the attack on the Stammheim prisoners and the Ponto assassination. Some of the prisoners escalate to a thirst strike almost immediately.
August 12, 1977
RAF member Elisabeth von Dyck is named as a suspect in connection with the Ponto assassination.
August 13, 1977
Berufsverbot is requested against attorney Kurt Groenewold.
August 14, 1977
Susanne Albrecht issues a communiqué on behalf of the RAF regarding the July 30 assassination of Ponto.
August 15, 1977
The office of attorneys Arndt Müller and Armin Newerla (previously Klaus Croissant’s office, which they have taken over) is firebombed while under 24-hour-a-day police surveillance.
August 20, 1977
Attorney Armin Newerla is arrested along with six other people.
August 22, 1977
Attorney Armin Newerla and the six other people arrested are released, but charges of supporting a terrorist organization are laid against Newerla and one other person.
August 25, 1977
A RAF commando carries out a failed missile attack against the BAW office in Karlsruhe. The rocket failed to ignite due to a technical failure.
August 30, 1977
Attorney Armin Newerla is rearrested and his office is searched and documents are seized.
September 2, 1977
Following the breakdown of negotiations between Amnesty International and the Federal Government, the prisoners call off their hunger and thirst strike.
September 5, 1977
West Germany’s top Industrialist, and former SS officer, Hanns Martin Schleyer is kidnapped from his limousine in Cologne, by the RAF’s Siegfried Hausner Commando. His chauffeur and three bodyguards are killed.
September 6, 1977
A total Contact Ban is instituted against all political prisoners.
September 13, 1977
At the funeral of Schleyer’s driver in Cologne, North Rhein-Westphalia Prime Minister Heinz Kühn delivers a speech warning the kidnappers that Schleyer’s death will have repercussions for the prisoners.
September 19, 1977
RAF member Angelika Speitel is involved in a shootout with police in Den Haag, Holland.
September 22, 1977
RAF member Knut Folkerts, a suspect in the Buback assassination, is arrested with a large sum of money and a false passport in Utrecht, Holland, following a shoot-out in which police officer Arie Kranenburg is killed. Brigitte Mohnhaupt manages to get away.
September 28, 1977
The Hamburg LG sentences RAF members Christa Eckes, Helmut Pohl, and Wolfgang Beer to seven years, five years, and four and a half years in prison, respectively.
September 29, 1977
Parliament votes 371 to 4, with 17 abstentions, ratifying the Contact Ban.
The editors of Arbeiterstimme (Workers’ Voice), the newspaper of the KBW, are sentenced to six months in prison for publishing an anonymous article entitled “Buback Shot—Enough Reasons, But What’s The Purpose.”
September 30, 1977
The BKA, through attorney Denis Payot, states that all of the countries visited by Hans Jürgen Wischnewski declined to accept the prisoners. Attorney Ardnt Müller is arrested and the documents remaining in his office are seized.
A representative from the BAW flies to Paris with information he claims proves defense attorney and political exile Klaus Croissant’s role in the RAF. Croissant is arrested.
October 2, 1977
Volker Speitel and Rosemarie Preiss, workers in Klaus Croissant’s office, are arrested on a train in Puttgarden.
October 8, 1977
Twenty thousand people participate in a demonstration in Bonn to protest the state’s threat to ban three Maoist organizations, the KBW, the KPD, and the KPD/ML.
October 13, 1977
A four person PFLP (EO) group calling itself the Struggle Against World Imperialism Organization, hijack a Lufthansa airliner en route from Majorca to Paris, taking it first to Rome, then to Cyprus. They issue a communiqué saying their action is meant to reinforce the demands of the Siegfried Hausner Commando. Attorney Hans-Christian Ströbele’s home and office are raided.
October 16, 1977
Denis Payot receives a communiqué from the SAWIO demanding the release of the eleven prisoners demanded by the RAF’s Siegfried Hausner Commando, as well as the release of two Palestinians held in Turkey, and fifteen million U.S. dollars, to be delivered by Schleyer’s son Eberhard.
October 17, 1977
The hijacked jetliner arrives at Mogadishu, Somalia.
Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski and the GSG-9 fly to Mogadishu.
The trial of Rolf Pohle begins in Munich.
October 18, 1977
The jetliner in Mogadishu is stormed and three of the four hijackers are killed, the fourth is badly injured, and one passenger dies of a heart attack.
Shortly thereafter a state official announces the “suicides” of Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin and the attempted “suicides” of Jan-Carl Raspe and Irmgard Möller. Raspe subsequently dies of his wounds. Only Möller survives to refute the state’s suicide contention. In West Be
rlin, thirty-eight apartments, bookstores, and printing shops are searched and forty people taken into custody. Info-BUG and its printers Firma Agit-Druck are amongst those targeted, and the radical newspaper now finds itself banned.
October 19, 1977
The DPA News Agency in Stuttgart receives the final communiqué from the kidnappers, saying that Schleyer has been executed. His body is found in the trunk of a green Audi 100 in the border town of Mülhausen, France, just where the RAF said it would be. Attorneys Otto Schily and Hans-Heinz Heldmann hold a press conference to denounce the state’s suicide story regarding the prisoners.
October 20, 1977
The Contact Ban is lifted.
October 27, 1977
Ensslin’s parents bury Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader in Stuttgart. Several hundred supporters attend the funeral.
November 2, 1977
At Klaus Croissant’s extradition trial in Paris, fifteen attorneys from all over West Europe plead that he not be extradited.
November 9–13, 1977
The 2JM kidnaps industrialist Walter Palmers in Vienna. He is released in exchange for a ransom of thirty-one million shillings, which was divided amongst the 2JM, the RAF, and a Palestinian group.
November 11, 1977
RAF members Christof Wackernagel and Gerd Schneider are arrested in Amsterdam. A year later they will be extradited to West Germany.
November 12, 1977
RAF prisoner Ingrid Schubert, one of eleven prisoners demanded in exchange for Schleyer, is found hanged in her cell in Munich. The state claims it is suicide but supporters believe it is a murder.
November 16, 1977
The French Court of Appeals rules that Klaus Croissant be extradited to West Germany.
November 17, 1977
Klaus Croissant is extradited from France to West Germany and immediately imprisoned in Stammheim.
November 19, 1977
RAF prisoner Irmgard Möller begins a hunger strike for association with RAF prisoner Verena Becker.
November 28, 1977
The trial of RAF member Verena Becker begins. She is charged with attempted murder, robbery, and membership in a terrorist organization.
December 20, 1977
In Utrecht, Holland, RAF member Knut Folkerts is sentenced to twenty years in prison. He is later extradited to West Germany.
December 28, 1977
The Stuttgart OLG sentences RAF member Verena Becker to life in prison.