The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History

by J. Smith

  Such pressure, combined with criticism from sympathetic quarters, including the Kommunistische Bund, was successful, and eventually led to a second set of hearings being held in January 1979, in which the Tribunal refocused its attention on political censorship, prison conditions, and the power wielded by the Verfassungsschutz in the FRG.

  This second set of Russell Tribunal hearings provided a space where those sympathetic to the RAF could work more productively in tandem with civil libertarians and human rights activists who still disagreed with the guerilla’s politics, but nevertheless did not countenance the state’s violence and repressive legislation.25 Such cooperation with liberal human rights activists had always been an important part of supporting the prisoners, despite the inevitable frustrations and pitfalls involved. But the situation was made all the more difficult now that the prisoners’ most trusted legal representatives—those best placed to navigate such waters—were themselves in prison, or facing charges, as a result of the crackdown. Klaus Croissant had been extradited from France on November 17, 1977, and was serving a thirty-month prison sentence for supporting a terrorist organization. Armin Newerla and Arndt Müller were similarly incarcerated as they awaited trial, accused of smuggling weapons into the Stammheim prisoners—an accusation based solely on the testimony of Volker Speitel and Hans-Joachim Dellwo, who had been flipped by the police. For his part, Kurt Groenewold was facing charges that would result in his receiving a two-year suspended sentence later in 1979, condemned for having facilitated communication between the prisoners via the “Info System” between 1973 and ‘76.26 Indeed, by the end of ‘77, these attacks had effectively put an end to the work of the IVK—the prisoners’ support committee founded in 1975 by lawyers from across Europe—in the FRG.

  Nonetheless, by the time the Russell Tribunal finished its deliberations, it had condemned the FRG on all counts.

  So it was, that much of the public attention paid to prison conditions was thanks to liberal watchdog organizations that certainly shared none of the RAF’s politics, for even a narrow civil liberties perspective provided ample scope to identify illiberal excesses in the FRG’s war against the guerilla, especially in its dreaded high-security wings.

  Another example of this occurred in February 1979, as Amnesty International sent a Memorandum on Prison Conditions of Persons Suspected or Convicted of Politically Motivated Crimes in the FRG to the minister of justice, Hans-Jochen Vogel. Here the international human rights organization reiterated the findings of previous inquiries:

  pathological disturbances representing a separation syndrome were apparent in many cases of prisoners detained in solitary confinement and small-group isolation. In some, intellectual and emotional disturbances and disturbances of the autonomic nervous system were so pronounced as to be reminiscent of the effects produced by sensory deprivation in experiments.

  Amnesty International concluded further that these effects of isolation militate against reform and rehabilitation, contrary to accepted international norms of imprisonment, and that ways must and can be found to accommodate security needs with humane treatment, avoiding the severe forms of isolation inherent in the prison conditions described in the memorandum.27

  Like the findings of the Russell Tribunal, such a declaration represented a potential step forward for the prisoners. Normally, a larger sympathetic base could have amplified these advances, but in the context of the day any political gain was largely muted. Thus, as Amnesty International noted, things remained grim for those behind bars—and for all their polite protests, the “human rights community” was unable to win anything but replies which, in AI’s own estimation, failed to address the substance of their concerns.28

  In the final analysis, the prisoners were left to rely on one another and their own collective identity in the battle against isolation torture.

  On April 20, 1979—exactly one year after the preceding hunger strike had been called off—more than seventy prisoners took part in the RAF prisoners’ seventh collective hunger strike, demanding an end to isolation and the release of Günter Sonnenberg, who despite his near-fatal injuries had been condemned to two life sentences in 1978. The anti-imperialist content of the strike was symbolized by the demand to be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention; this was meant to affirm the connection between armed struggle in the metropole and the anticolonial revolutions in the Third World.

  The prisoners also demanded an inquiry into prison conditions to be carried out by an international body. While the Russell Tribunal and Amnesty International’s declarations against prison conditions had been welcome, this was in fact a demand directed at the remnants of several previous initiatives with more clearly anti-imperialist politics: not only the IVK, but also the International Investigatory Commission into the Death of Ulrike Meinhof, the various Committees Against Torture, and the FRG Relatives Committee. The networks of people who had been involved in these groups remained active, and were in fact consolidating their work in this period; in June, as the strike was in its second month, they would officially come together as the Internationale Kommission zum Schutz der Gefangenen und gegen die Isolationshaft, or International Commission for the Protection of Prisoners and Against Isolation Torture.

  On June 15, Amnesty International contacted the Baden-Württemberg and federal authorities about reports that the hunger strike had reached a critical stage for a number of prisoners. It was particularly concerned about Irmgard Möller, who was still being held at Stammheim, where she and Bernhard Braun had been brought up on new charges relating to the 1972 May Offensive.29 Without supporting the politics of the RAF, the international human rights organization once again called upon the state to stop inflicting solitary confinement and small-group isolation on the political prisoners.30

  Actually, the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Justice seemed to be escalating matters, for it was now reported that Möller would not be force-fed until she fell into a coma. Supporters understood this to mean that the state was preparing for her to starve to death. In reaction to this, on June 20, women prisoners in West Berlin escalated to a thirst strike. The RAF’s Monika Berberich, along with Angelika Goder, Gabriele Rollnik, and Gudrun Stürmer of the 2JM, called for Möller to be immediately granted association, while also supporting all of the strike’s other demands. As they explained in a statement released by Rollnik’s attorney Ulrich Bergmann, “Escalating to a thirst strike is the only option we have to resist this attempted murder.”31

  All the pieces appeared to be falling into place for yet more tragedy. The prisoners were struggling to improve their conditions and to advance their politics, but not to create martyrs. With the deaths of one or more of their number seeming increasingly likely, the decision was made to call off the hunger strike on June 26.

  Unexpectedly, just before the prisoners’ recommenced eating, the guerilla chose to enter the mix.

  GUERILLA WOES

  Following the release of Boock, Hofmann, Mohnhaupt, and Wagner in Yugoslavia, the RAF had regrouped in South Yemen, where those who had remained at large were asked why there had been no actions carried out to free prisoners. It is said to have been a time of heavy discussions and some soul-searching, as more than one guerilla came in for criticism.

  It was in February 1979 that several combatants returned to Europe. In March, a bank in Darmstadt was relieved of an estimated 49,000 DM—when a customer intervened and grabbed one of the robbers, another guerilla shot him in the leg. The next month in Nuremberg the haul was much larger: 211,000 DM.32

  The war chest was being replenished, but at the same time, the state continued its pursuit.

  Elisabeth von Dyck

  On May 4, two weeks into the prisoners’ seventh hunger strike, Elisabeth von Dyck was identified approaching a safehouse in Nuremberg; she was cut down by police bullets, dying on the spot. Although police claimed she had been turning to fire, her parents noted in a public statement that the house had been under surveillance for some ti
me, but no plans had been made for anything but a firefight, and their daughter had been shot in the back.33 Within the guerilla, the police story was considered impossible, von Dyck being known for her refusal to carry a weapon.34

  Von Dyck’s funeral; “They can kill a revolutionary, but not the revolution.”

  Like most RAF members, von Dyck had been politicized through the APO. She had been close to the Socialist Patients Collective (SPK), the radical antipsychiatry group that furnished a number of the guerilla’s early recruits, and had subsequently done support work for Carmen Roll, a RAF prisoner. She later served as a legal assistant to Klaus Croissant. In early 1975, she was briefly detained in Zurich for allegedly attempting to acquire guns. In November 1976, she was again briefly arrested and detained, this time with attorney Siegfried Haag. As a consequence, both she and Haag had decided to go underground.35

  One month after von Dyck’s shooting, on June 9, Rolf Heißler was captured after he miraculously survived being shot in the head as he entered a safehouse in Frankfurt.36 One hand had been holding a briefcase, the other had been on the door handle: his weapon had been in its holster, inside his pants.37 Besides lethal intent, Heißler’s capture represented a new level of sophistication on the part of the BKA, which had located the apartment through the use of computerized data mining and cross-referencing. As an engineering magazine explains:

  Much was already known about the terrorists. “The police knew that they rented apartments to conduct their crimes,” recalls Hansjürgen Garstka, the State of Berlin’s commissioner for data protection and freedom of information. “But they used them only a couple days before the event. Also, the police knew these people paid their electricity and rent only in cash.” The terrorists preferred high-rise apartments with underground garages and direct access to the highway, and they were primarily young and German.

  Profile in hand, the police contacted electricity companies, to find out which apartments used no or little electricity, and apartment complexes, to find out which people paid in cash; they also combed through household registrations (German citizens are required to register with the state). “The results were all merged, and in the end, they found one flat which fit absolutely absolutely this profile,” Garstka says. Police put the apartment under surveillance and soon nabbed RAF member Rolf Heißler.38

  Heißler spent a few weeks in the hospital, where he was told how unfortunate it was that he had survived. He was then placed in complete isolation, often going days without hearing a single word spoken. Due to his injuries, he lost most of his sight in one eye.39

  The murder of von Dyck and attempted murder of Heißler took two more fighters off the street, but it was not enough to scuttle the guerilla’s plans.

  Rolf Heißler

  On Monday, June 25, 1979—one day before the prisoners called off their hunger strike—the RAF carried out its first attack since 1977. On that morning, in Belgium, the Andreas Baader Commando attempted to assassinate General Alexander Haig. Former White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Haig had served as Supreme Allied Commander—head of NATO and U.S. forces—in Europe since 1974. The RAF attack took place only a few days before he was scheduled to step down.

  The Andreas Baader Commando buried a load of plastic explosives by the road that Haig normally took to work. As his car passed by, the charge was manually detonated; however, something had gone awry, for the general sped off, and it was soon apparent that he had escaped uninjured. The commando would later explain: “Our error was in thinking that we could manually trigger the explosion precisely enough with the target moving that quickly.”40 However, police investigators would claim that the real problem was that not enough dynamite had been used.41

  As is not uncommon in the world of guerilla actions and state psychological operations, initially there were conflicting stories floated about the attack’s authors. Some news agencies reported that an unknown “Julian Lahaut Commando”—named after a Belgian Communist politician assassinated in 1950—had claimed responsibility.42 British sources blamed the IRA, which at the time was also carrying out attacks in Belgium, and using similar munitions to boot.43 Within the FRG, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND; West Germany’s foreign spy agency) and the Verfassungsschutz considered it a RAF action, while the BKA disagreed, pointing to the discrepancies between the technical details described in the communiqué and evidence of how the attack was actually carried out.44 Even the CIA, according to one account, when contacted by Haig soon after and asked to find out who wanted him dead, came back with a somewhat bizarre theory, the director of central intelligence opining that the four-star general had been the target of “Belgian nihilists.”45

  Soon enough, however, it became clear that this was indeed the first RAF attack since ‘77. Even more noteworthy—and perhaps contributing to the initial uncertainty about its authors—was the fact that this action was not aimed at securing freedom for the prisoners, but rather sought to deliver a blow against NATO. Haig was not responsible for the prisoners’ conditions, but was being targeted for his position in imperialism’s war machine. The attack came in the midst of a hunger strike where prisoners’ lives were at stake, several having escalated to refusing liquids, and yet the RAF’s communiqué did not once mention their comrades behind bars or their conditions. This was a first.

  In retrospect, ideological factors can be discerned in this change of tack—especially in the exhortation to “Build the anti-imperialist front in the metropole!”—but the significance of this would only become clear in the years to come. For the time being, it was enough that the RAF was back. Just carrying out an attack after ‘77 was a major achievement, even though in military terms it was a failure, with Haig escaping unscathed.

  However, this failure would soon be compounded.

  A SETBACK IN SWITZERLAND

  After the Haig action, the RAF was broke. The money from Darmstadt and Nuremberg had been used up renting safehouses in Brussels and Paris, as well as on food, clothing, and travel. It was decided to acquire more funds in Switzerland, with the hope that police would be caught unawares, as the RAF had never been active there in the past. At first, there were some discussions about kidnapping a Swiss businessman, however the group still did not have the capacity for such an operation.46 Instead, the decision was made to hit a bank.

  The RAF had been robbing banks since its earliest days, initially alongside the 2JM, but thereafter on its own. This was considered a relatively low-risk way of acquiring necessary funds: as Monika Berberich later explained, “It was not about redistributing wealth, it was about getting money, and we weren’t going to mug grannies in the streets.”47 Or as the RAF had put it to supporters in its 1972 document Serve the People:

  For revolutionary organizations, it mainly represents the solution to their financial problems. It makes logical sense, because there is no other solution to the financial problem. It makes political sense, because it is an expropriation action. It makes tactical sense, because it is a proletarian action. It makes strategic sense, because it finances the guerilla.48

  This was made all the more palatable by the fact that no civilian had ever been killed in an expropriation by the West German guerilla. The 2JM had decided early on that they would try to scare bank employees into cooperating, and would potentially be open to roughing up the bank managers, but that they would not shoot people for money. On one occasion they even called off a robbery when they saw a pregnant woman enter the premises, as they feared their smoke grenade might damage her unborn child.49 In fact, in nine years of struggle, the only person to have ever been killed during a guerilla expropriation was police officer Herbert Schoner, who was shot dead after stumbling upon the RAF robbing a bank in Kaiserslautern in 1971.50

  This long run of good luck came to an end on November 19, 1979.

  On that day, four guerillas robbed the Swiss People’s Bank in Zurich. After stuffing 548,000 Swiss Francs (roughly $237,000) into shopping bags, they w
alked out into the crowded street, hopped on bicycles, and sped off to the nearby central train station.

  Right away, there was an unexpected complication, as a bank employee decided to play hero. Flagging down a car, he explained the situation and convinced the driver to take off in pursuit, apparently intending to snatch the money back. Somewhat comically, they were almost upon the guerillas, when a traffic light turned red and the car’s driver screeched to a halt; he needed to be cajoled to roll slowly through the intersection, and insisted on leaning on the horn all the while. A guerilla heard the noise, and at that point realized someone was following: he turned around and shot at the car, not hitting anyone, but shattering the windshield, and thus putting an end to the pursuit.51

  The guerillas reached their destination, but things continued to go wrong when they were spotted by a cop. The result being that a firefight broke out in the train station’s underground Shopville mall, during which a bullet ricocheted and struck a bystander in the neck—Edith Kletzhändler, described in all accounts as a housewife, would die almost instantly. Two policemen were also wounded, and a second woman was shot as three guerillas forced her out of her car, which they promptly used to make their getaway.52

  Rolf Clemens Wagner was the only RAF member to be captured—he was found sitting on a bench not far from the mall where Kletzhändler lay dying. He offered no further resistance, and besides his weapon, police found he was carrying most of the money from the robbery.53 He stood trial in Switzerland, charged with murder, five counts of attempted murder, bank robbery, and one count of threatening someone’s life. In September 1980 he was found guilty of attempted murder and robbery.54 He was then extradited to the FRG in 1982, where he stood accused of involvement in Schleyer’s killing.