Germans Reliving Red Army Faction's Season of Terror Parole of Unrepentant Figure Stirs Debate By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, March 4, 2007; A1 http://www.washingt <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-> onpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/03/03/AR2007030300979.html
OBERURSEL, Germany -- Bearing a bouquet of red roses, the terrorists rang the bell at the German banker's mansion and asked politely if he was available for tea. Shortly after entering the foyer and handing the flowers to their unwitting host -- Juergen Ponto, chief executive of Dresdner Bank and confidant to West Germany's chancellor -- the three visitors drew handguns and opened fire. Then they vanished into the twilight of this wealthy suburb outside Frankfurt, leaving a prominent German capitalist dead. Ponto's killing, on July 30, 1977, began a wave of terrorist attacks that traumatized German society like no other events since World War II. The perpetrators, a leftist guerrilla group known as the Red Army Faction, went on to hijack a Lufthansa flight, assassinate other German business executives and nearly kill two U.S. generals in Europe. Thirty years later, Germany is suddenly reliving the events of 1977 and finding residents still bitterly divided over their meaning, thanks to a court decision to parole one of the terrorist masterminds, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, now 57, later this month. Another Red Army Faction leader, Christian Klar, 54, is also seeking an early release from prison that could occur in the next two years. Both were convicted of murder in the Ponto slaying and have been accused of a long list of other bombings and crimes in the 1970s and 1980s. After serving more than two decades in prison, however, neither has apologized or shown any remorse for their ideological fanaticism. The prospect of their release has stirred a passionate public debate over whether they should be forgiven after all these years. It has also prompted many Germans to question whether they have failed to resolve a painful chapter of their past that some had assumed was buried. "With this new debate, many wounds have been reopened," said Butz Peters, a lawyer and author of three books on the Red Army Faction. "The question is, how do we deal with 1977? 1977 has not been forgotten, and it is still a deep wound in the German soul." The Red Army Faction was founded in 1970, an offshoot of a vigorous leftist student movement that had taken root across West Germany. Initially known for low-casualty bombings of police and military facilities, the group became progressively more violent in the late 1970s, targeting for assassination industrialists, prosecutors and other agents of what it termed "the capitalist state." While few Germans embraced the bloodshed, sympathy for the group's ideological goals was widespread within the rebellious generation born after World War II, which was seeking to make a sharper break with the country's Nazi past and its postwar alliance with the United States. The social revolution divided many families, especially in the West German financial capital of Frankfurt and its wealthy suburbs. "In Oberursel, you had very, very rich families very high in the business world, and yet all of their three children were communists," said Hans-Georg Brum, a former student activist who now is mayor of this town of 43,000 people. "It was a very strange time back then. We were all very critical of society. The question was, how far can you go? Can you turn to violence?" Brum was a 21-year-old student at the time of the Ponto murder. He recalled driving by the Ponto estate that evening on his way to a concert and seeing police cars outside. News quickly spread that the banker had been shot. The impact of the crime on German society, Brum said, was immediate -- even committed leftists realized that the Red Army Faction had crossed a line. "Any kind of support or understanding for the RAF immediately vanished," he said. "It was incomprehensible that people would commit murder like this." Red Army Faction guerrillas had already killed West Germany's chief prosecutor. In October 1977, RAF members hijacked a Lufthansa flight on its way to Frankfurt, fatally shot the pilot and diverted the plane to Somalia. A German commando squad rescued the passengers there, but hours later a separate RAF team responded by killing Hanns- Martin Schleyer, head of the West German Employers' Federation, who had been kidnapped in Cologne. Almost overnight, life changed for West Germany's capitalist and ruling class. Corporations and government agencies placed their leaders under 24-hour guard as police tried to grapple with the new threat. Karl Gustaf Ratjen, 86, a close friend of Ponto and former chief executive of a metal trading firm, recalled how he and his colleagues in the suburbs of Frankfurt had to alter their daily routines, relying on security teams and taking a different route to work every day. "I'm still not listed in the telephone book, which I realize is a little silly," he said. Although the threat level dissipated years ago, Ratjen said some aspects of German society still haven't changed, including a certain starry, romantic idealism that enabled groups such as the Red Army Faction to emerge in the first place. "This blue-eyed political thinking, it's typical for my country, but it's a danger," he said. "It's much less now today, much less, but there are still some people who think this, and in certain circumstances it comes out a little bit." The Red Army Faction, accused of killing at least 30 people, disbanded in 1998. Four members remain on Germany's most-wanted lists but haven't been seen since 1990. Four others, including Mohnhaupt and Klar, remain behind bars. Four leaders committed suicide in prison, while several others were released in the early 1990s. Mohnhaupt has been in prison since 1982, when she was sentenced to five life terms plus 15 years for killing Ponto and other crimes. Klar has been locked up since 1983 and was given a similar sentence. In Germany, however, there is no such thing as a life sentence without parole; under the German constitution, every prisoner has the right to petition for eventual release. A team of psychologists and prosecutors certified last month that Mohnhaupt no longer poses a threat to public safety, so she is scheduled to go free March 27. Klar is not eligible for release until Jan. 3, 2009. In the meantime, he has applied for a presidential pardon, but many analysts said he has hurt his chances by writing a rhetoric-laden screed to a leftist group in Berlin affirming his support for the demise of capitalism. A survey of 1,000 Germans for Stern magazine found that 52 percent oppose the early release of Mohnhaupt and Klar, with 34 percent in favor and the remainder undecided. Lawmakers and law enforcement officials have likewise been divided. "Somebody who has served 24 years in prison has to be given the chance of returning to society," said former justice minister Klaus Kinkel. Countered Guenter Beckstein, the interior minister of the state of Bavaria, "I feel uneasy about the release of a dangerous criminal who never expressed remorse for her actions." Polls indicate that many people opposed to the release of the Red Army Faction leaders nonetheless believe that they should be treated like any other prisoners; if the court system objectively determines that they have served their time, they should be allowed back on the streets. Rainer Haase, a longtime history teacher at a high school in Oberursel who vividly recalls the weekend Ponto was slain, said the town was infuriated by the crime and remains so. He recalled that the killers, after their capture, wanted to be classified as prisoners of war in what they considered their battle against a corrupt society. But he said many Germans were determined to deny them any special treatment, either way. "They were murderers like any other murderers," he said. "They have the same rights as everybody else. This is our democracy." Special correspondent Shannon Smiley contributed to this report. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Yahoo! Groups gets a make over. See the new email design. http://us.click.yahoo.com/hOt0.A/lOaOAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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