New investigation denied into deaths of RAF members

BERLIN: German prosecutors on Friday said they have rejected a request for a new investigation into the 1977 prison deaths of three members of extreme-left militant group the Red Army Faction (RAF), citing a lack of fresh evidence.

The RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, mounted a bloody campaign of shootings, bomb attacks and kidnappings against what it saw as the oppressive capitalist state of West Germany from 1977 to 1982. The group officially disbanded in 1998.

Three of the RAF’s early members — Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe — died in a high-security prison in Stuttgart on the night of Oct.18, 1977. Authorities ruled the deaths suicides, but Ensslin’s brother Gottfried and an author have challenged this.

However, prosecutors in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where the prison is located, said in a statement that “investigations will not resume into the RAF case” because “no new evidence was submitted that would raise questions about the original findings.”

The prosecutors dismissed as fake a document suggesting a guard had been pulled off duty from the wing where the prisoners were on the night. The RAF, born out of the extreme militant fringe of the 1960s student and anti-Vietnam war protests, targeted the German political and business elite and US military bases. Their reign of terror claimed 34 victims, and more were injured in bank robberies and bomb attacks.

After “first-generation” members including Baader and former journalist Ulrike Meinhof were captured, they were jailed in the high security prison Stuttgart-Stammheim and sentenced to mostly life terms.


Source http://gulftoday.ae/portal/fb0f47fd-9cbf-4415-bfb8-79f9a3f726e6.aspx