Fugitive for 30 Years, Former German RAF Member Sentenced to 13 Years in Prison
Former member of the German left-wing militant group, the Red Army Faction (RAF), has been sentenced to 13 years in prison on Wednesday (27 May). The 67-year-old woman, Daniela Klette, was found guilty of a series of armed robberies committed between 1999 and 2016.
Klette was finally arrested in a Berlin apartment in 2024 after evading capture for over 30 years. Despite her defence team’s plea for acquittal, the court in Verden, Lower Saxony, convicted her of aggravated robbery, firearms violations, and other crimes committed over a 17-year period.
The RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was a radical anti-capitalist group that disbanded after carrying out murders, kidnappings, and bombings from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. The court found that Klette robbed supermarkets and armoured cash transports alongside two other former RAF members, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub, who remain at large.
The guilty verdict was met with protests from dozens of Klette’s supporters in court, who jeered the judge and chanted “freedom for Daniela”.
Hans-Jakob Schindler, head of the Counter Extremism Project, described Klette as “a kind of grandmotherly hero for Berlin’s far-left extremists”.
During the trial, Klette did not explicitly acknowledge her RAF membership. Schindler told the BBC that Klette would never face trial for past terrorism charges due to the statute of limitations having expired. However, she could still face further proceedings as federal prosecutors suspect her involvement in three bombings and shootings by the group.
The trial focused solely on eight robbery incidents in northern and western Germany. The first occurred in Duisburg in July 1999, when masked assailants rammed an armoured cash transport and threatened guards with weapons and grenade launchers. The last took place in June 2016 near Braunschweig, where the gang stole nearly €1.4 million.
Klette’s escape ended in February 2024 after police received a tip-off. She was found living in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district using a pseudonym and foreign passport. During a raid, authorities seized weapons, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenade replicas, wigs, fake IDs, gold, and €240,000 in cash.
Remarkably, Klette was tracked down by an investigative journalist using AI facial recognition software, which matched her wanted poster photo with recent images circulating online.