It was the most spectacular arrest and the greatest success of the prosecuting authorities in the fight against terrorism, for many decades: on February 26, the German police, using relevant information, located and arrested 65-year-old Daniela Klette, a former member of the terrorist organization ” Red Army Factions’ (RAF), responsible for dozens of murders and attacks up until the 1990s.

An entire arsenal (bazookas, pistols and Kalashnikov rifles) was found in Klette’s apartment in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, as well as 40,000 euros in cash. But it seems that there were also mishandlings during the police raid, which allowed Klette to “go to the toilet”, as a result of which she alerted the also-wanted Burkhard Gerweg by mobile phone in time. Gerweg has since disappeared from Berlin, as has Ernst Volker Staub, another wanted member of the RAF’s latest generation of terrorists.

The head of the Criminal Investigation Service of Lower Saxony, Frido de Vries, appears nevertheless optimistic about their arrest. “I can’t imagine that right now they are sleeping peacefully,” he told the German News Agency (dpa). “We are determined to arrest Mr. Garveg and Mr. Staub.”

I will “talk» her findings police?

Prosecutors have confirmed that one of the pistols found in Klette’s apartment was stolen from a gun shop in the Rhineland town of Maxdorf in 1984. They hope to have more information soon. Even today the police do not know who the shooters were and what weapons were used in the RAF terror attacks.

The so-called “last generation” of the RAF – to which Klette, Gerweg and Staub belong – is responsible for ten murders carried out between 1984 and 1993. Among the victims were Alfred Heerhausen, chairman of Deutsche Bank, as well as Detlef Carsten Rovender, head of “Truichant”, the agency for the exploitation of public property in the former East Germany. For the RAF they were two typical representatives of a hated capitalist state.

A story that begins in the decade ’60

Three generations of left-wing terrorists marked the post-war history of Federal Germany. The first appearance of the RAF takes place in the wake of student mobilizations in the late 60s, aiming for anti-capitalist revolution and an end to the war in Vietnam. In Frankfurt there are successive arson attacks on department stores, for which Andreas Baander and Gudrun Enslin are arrested. This was the first generation of RAF terrorists.

The second generation is active in the mid-70s and attempts to extort the release of imprisoned members of the organization with the murders of Attorney General Siegfried Buback and the President of the Employers’ Association Hans Martin Schleier. The third and final generation is the most “enigmatic”, as it is said to have operated until the self-disbandment of the RAF in 1998, without yet being identified. It is alleged that in the following years, its members participated in bank robberies and remittances, in order to ensure their illegal survival.

Why did it take so long for the RAF to come back into the spotlight? Speaking to DW, Constantin von Notch, the Greens’ home affairs spokesman, says the prosecution “didn’t take the risk of terrorism very seriously” as the murderous attacks had ended, while “the rest of the crimes were committed for the financial survival of the perpetrators, with the authorities ruling out political motives”. Even the announcement of Klette, Gerweg and Staub is done with very old photos of them, as if all three have disappeared from the face of the earth.

Aliens “support events»

After her arrest in February, Daniela Klette was taken to the women’s prison in the town of Vechta in Lower Saxony. Her cell is monitored by cameras 24 hours a day. She remains isolated from other prisoners, remaining silent on the charges brought against her, as many other members of the RAF have done in the past.

After her arrest, there was no shortage of support events for Daniela Klete. On March 9, about 600 “solidarists” gathered in front of her home in Berlin, although she herself had already been taken to prison. Another support rally followed on March 17, outside Vechta prisons. A new rally is planned for next week. For Constantin von Notch, all this is an indication that the followers of extreme leftist ideology have not disappeared. “The findings at the home of the accused, but also the demonstrations of support from extreme left-wing elements prove that the danger from the third generation of the RAF has not passed,” says the Greens politician.

The RAF was responsible for at least 33 assassinations in the period 1971-1993. By the time of its self-dissolution in 1998, approximately 500 people had been convicted of participating in the terrorist organization and another 1,000 for supporting or assisting it. 26 members of the RAF were initially sentenced to life in prison, but some of them have since been released. An example is Christian Clare, one of the pioneers of the RAF in the 1970s, who was released in 2008 after serving a 26-year prison sentence. So far he has not renounced his past.