GERMAY:One of the last members of Germany's left-wing militant Red Army Faction (RAF) still behind bars is to be freed on parole next month after serving 24 years in prison.
A state court in Stuttgart ruled yesterday that Brigitte Mohnhaupt (57) posed no threat to public safety and should be released after serving the minimum sentence.
Her release next month has revived memories of the notorious "German Autumn" of 1977, the peak of the RAF's violent campaign of bombings, kidnappings and killings that drove West Germany to the brink of a constitutional crisis.
It has also sparked protests from conservative politicians and relatives of RAF victims, who complain that Mohnhaupt is, in effect, being pardoned at the earliest possible opportunity although she has never shown remorse for her actions.
Anticipating its critics, the Stuttgart court said in a statement: "This is not a pardon, rather a decision that is based on specific legal considerations. The decision for probation was reached based on the determination that no security risk exists."
Mohnhaupt was arrested in 1982 and sentenced to five life sentences three years later. Subsequent reviews of German law, however, allow prisoners to served multiple life sentences concurrently and to be released on parole after 24 years if they are not viewed as a threat to society.
Mohnhaupt was one of the "second generation" of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, formed in 1970 by Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin in 1970.
With roots in the anti-Vietnam War movement, the group began a campaign to undermine West Germany, which it believed had placed the economic recovery ahead of a full examination of its Nazi past. After two years on the run, robbing banks and bombing buildings, the gang leaders were arrested in 1972 and went on trial in 1975.
Mohnhaupt emerged as a leader of a second generation that cranked up the organisation's violent streak, murdering leading members of the West German establishment such as Dresdner Bank chief executive Jürgen Ponto and West Germany's chief prosecutor Siegfried Buback.
She was also convicted for her role in the RAF's most infamous murder, that of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, a former SS officer and head of the West Germany's Employers' Federation.
The group held him hostage for 43 days demanding the release of Baader and other RAF prisoners. But after the imprisoned RAF leaders committed suicide simultaneously, Schleyer's captors shot Schleyer in the head, and dumped his body in a car.