The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History (52 page)

This collective sentencing at terrorism trials is, from my point of view—and not only because it affects me personally—a tremendous obstacle to this whole defector problem…. Obviously, what incentive would a defector have to turn himself in, if he sees years of prison or even a life sentence in store for him.
⁵⁸

Those who were disappointed by Boock's initial treatment would be truly dismayed by what came next. Soon after his trial began, the hardliners gained the upper hand, not because of their own successes in the counterinsurgency field, but due to larger political changes afoot. That year, the FDP made the historic decision to break with Schmidt's SPD over the question of job security, which the liberals wanted gutted. On October 1, 1983, the CDU called for a vote of no-confidence and, supported by the FDP, took power. This was ratified by a federal election several months later, with the FDP once again supporting the CDU and CSU, which now formed the government. Although the Free Democrats were a necessary part of this new coalition, the Ministry of the Interior was removed from their hands for the first time since 1969; Baum's old position now went to the CSU's Friedrich Zimmermann, a former member of the Nazi Party under Hitler.

Needless to say, the “openness” of the Baum years quickly came to a close, and this did nothing to help Boock. After a fifteen-month trial, on May 7, 1984, the repentant guerilla was found guilty of six counts of murder related to the Ponto and Schleyer actions. He was also found guilty of membership in the RAF under §129a, and the court rejected his claim that he had sabotaged the BAW action, declaring him guilty of four counts of attempted murder in that regard.
⁵⁹

Because at the time there was no evidence proving that he had actually been at the scene of any of the killings, the most serious charges against Boock all relied on the collective responsibility thesis. Representing the BAW, Peter Zeis—a right-wing prosecutor who had made a career out of RAF trials, and who insisted on referring to Boock and his lawyers as “the accused and his aides”
⁶⁰
—had asked for four life sentences. Judge Walther Eitel gave almost that: three life sentences plus fifteen years. It was the heaviest penalty pronounced in a RAF trial up to that point.
⁶¹

For all his public repudiation of the guerilla, Boock had received no mercy from the state. “Where fairness was promised,” one newspaper complained, “the attorney general demonstrated unyielding harshness.”
⁶²

Even before the sentence was pronounced, Baum acknowledged that Boock's treatment cast doubt on the credibility of past appeals to RAF members to defect.
⁶³
But with the Ministry of the Interior now in the hands of the right wing, the soft counterinsurgency project Baum had developed seemed consigned to the back burner, if not the dustbin. Dialogue was no longer pursued, nor did the state prioritize cultivating more defectors—once again the demand was for clear repudiation from those wishing to separate from the guerilla, and a willingness to testify in court against their former comrades.

Nevertheless, the defeat was neither as complete nor as deep as it may have seemed. Just a year later, with the support of several prominent liberals, Boock would successfully appeal his sentence (though not his conviction), which in November 1986 was reduced to a single life term. His appeal, both legally and to his admirers, was certainly not hurt by the fact that he began to divulge more and more “information” about
the RAF, much of it questionable, becoming even more outspoken in his criticisms of his former comrades.
⁶⁴
In point of fact, Boock was soon blurring the line between “defector” and “turncoat,” and as such could be considered to be vindicating Rebmann's hard line, despite the fact that he continued to be supported and courted by liberals more likely to be have been sympathetic to Baum.

At the same time, before he was removed from office, Baum's overtures had caught the attention of some of those prisoners who had been questioning the RAF's strategy. Klaus Jünschke now took a more public position repudiating armed struggle in a bid to have his isolation conditions relaxed.
⁶⁵
He was joined by Christof Wackernagel and Gert Schneider, both of whom had been arrested in 1978, who now also began speak out against the RAF. By 1982, the three were allowing themselves to figure prominently in a campaign orchestrated by former
Sponti
Wolfgang Pohrt in favor of amnesty for those who repudiated the armed struggle.
⁶⁶
As Wackernagel would argue:

Everywhere in the world where there are guerilla prisoners, the demand for amnesty is raised. Why not in the FRG? Our orientation for all other issues comes from the liberation movements, why not in this case? Israel trades 4,000 PLO prisoners for six Israelis, but the FRG wouldn't exchange anyone for one employers president and ninety civilians. In Ireland IRA prisoners struggle to be released without having to renounce their politics. Here the very idea is treated like betrayal, a split, surrender. In Germany, both sides have an identical commitment: final victory. Both the BAW and the anti-imps have the same pipe-dream. They both serve imperialism's interests and not the struggle against it.
⁶⁷

Regardless of where it might have led, with Baum's departure, Pohrt's campaign was doomed. Despite a public declaration from a
Verfassungsschutz
section head that he was sure the three prisoners had truly repudiated armed struggle, and that it was out of the question that they would ever reoffend, the idea of an amnesty, either individual or collective, went nowhere.

As for Baum, while he was atypical of the security establishment in the FRG at the time, the more nuanced approach that he represented was not without its parallels internationally. During the period between 1979 and 1982, for example, Italy, Spain, and England all experimented with differentiated prison regimes and categories of guilt and defection in their respective struggles against the Red Brigades, ETA, and the Irish Republicans.
⁶⁸

Furthermore, even in the West German security establishment, certain individuals had noticed how repression without nuance played into a cycle of escalation which had benefited the revolutionary left. Although rare and often isolated, the failures of the right-wing approach would gradually leave the field open to these individuals, and although it may have seemed farfetched in 1983, by the end of the decade it was they who would be directing the state's “antiterrorism” machine.

One of these unlikely figures was Christian Lochte, the head of the Hamburg
Verfassungsschutz,
and the one who had spoken out on behalf of Jünschke, Wackernagel, and Schneider. Despite being a life-long member of the CDU, Lochte would become increasingly prominent in the 1980s as the
Verfassungsschutz
section chief who had no patience for the stilted repression of the right. He insisted that the guerilla threat had been exaggerated, and that the measures taken in 1977 had been an overreaction. Agreeing to be interviewed by the left-wing
taz,
he announced that the newspaper was one of the best sources for analysis about the armed struggle and that if it didn't exist the
Verfassungsschutz
would have had to set it up themselves, adding that he had taken out subscriptions for each of his caseworkers.
⁶⁹

Christian Lochte

Even as Rebmann and company continued to push for more draconian legislation, Lochte was repeating Baum's earlier observations regarding the use of prison conditions to exacerbate divisions within the guerilla:

In the case of a decision to defect from a terrorist group, the treatment the defectors receive at the hands of state agencies is decisive. It shouldn't be special treatment in the sense of better treatment than other convicts (as “mollycoddled” defectors), but it also shouldn't be worse treatment than other convicts (as a particularly dangerous terrorist). Prevention doesn't only mean “encouraging defection,” but also “preventing people from joining.” For the hard core of the RAF, the lack of difference in the way defectors are treated only confirms their understanding of “political justice.” It cannot appear that defection is only possible through betrayal. That would only confirm the either-or formula the RAF promotes.

In the end, terrorism in the Federal Republic will probably only be overcome by the internal decay of the terror groups. This decay should be promoted by all means possible. As a result, the treatment of arrested defectors and their known circle is crucial. It can play a major role in encouraging other people to bolt from the terror scene. In the treatment of arrested defectors suspected of serious crimes, there are few legal options for perks, relief or shorter sentences. Therefore, it is all the more important to use the limited remaining leeway for measures that build trust.
⁷⁰

Lochte would go even further, and from within the
Verfassungsschutz
became an early proponent of relaxing prison conditions for all RAF prisoners, even supporting association. As he would put it near the end of his career, “to bring about the end of the RAF, the end of what they call armed struggle, association is a necessary first step.”
⁷¹

The reader should make no mistake: while their proposals clearly placed Lochte and Baum at odds with the political establishment in the early 1980s, their approach was less a sign of weakness than of intelligence. Both men understood that their job description meant putting an end to the armed struggle, and they took this job seriously enough to see past the state's own propaganda, grasping the fact that without
a political component the ongoing arrests and killings were unlikely to do much good.

But the proof of this lay in the future. In 1983, the hardliners once again set the tone, rendering the state incapable of fully exploiting divisions among its opponents when they occurred. When this strategy would be resurrected, it would be partly thanks to a new opposition party, one that first entered the
Bundestag
at the same time as the SPD lost power.

As we have seen, disenchantment had been growing throughout Helmut Schmidt's chancellorship, as the SPD moved further to the right while clashing with an array of grassroots movements. Following the 1983 elections, this process entered a new phase, as the Greens won 5.6 percent of the popular vote and entered the
Bundestag
for the first time with twenty-seven seats.

From here on in, the Greens—the “anti-party” party, carrying the hopes of the Citizens Initiatives and the antinuclear and antimissile movements—would represent the most progressive option in the electoral arena. As such, the SPD found itself deprived of much of its base, while the revolutionary movements were confronted by a new political machine eager to integrate them into the system. The Greens were instrumental in pressuring the “peace” movement to adopt a strictly nonviolent code of conduct, and although its relationship with the
Autonomen
would remain complex for several years, by the end of the decade it was lining up behind the police in demanding a clampdown on its erstwhile allies.
⁷²