The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (57 page)

Finally, this paragraph conveys the conscious nature of this political corruption of justice, as it violates the constitutional idea that “Nobody can be deprived of …,” and because today, just as in the 50s, it lays the basis for trials based on opinions, that is to say, for the criminalization of opinions.

It is a paragraph that is dysfunctional, given that the bourgeois state claims that the bourgeoisie is by its very nature the political class. Within the bourgeois state’s system of self-justification, it reflects the fact that the system—capitalism—is transitory, as their special law against class antagonism undermines the ideology of the bourgeois state.

As a special law, it cannot produce any consensus, and no consensus is expected. It equates the monopoly of violence with parliamentarianism and private ownership of the means of production. Clearly, this law is also an expression of the weakness of the proletariat here since 45. They want to legally safeguard the situation that the U.S. occupation forces established here, by destroying all examples of autonomous and antagonistic organization.

The entire construct, with its lies, simply reveals the degree to which the imperialist superstructure has lost touch with its own base, has lost touch with everything that makes up life and history. It reveals the deep contradiction found at the heart of the break between society and the state. It reveals the degree to which all the factors that mediate between real life and imperialist legality are dispensed with in this, the most
advanced stage of imperialism. They are antagonistic. The relationship is one of war, within which maintaining legitimacy is reduced to simply camouflaging nakedly opportunist calculations.

In short, we only intend to refer to the concept of an offense committed by an organization, which forms the entire basis for Buback’s charge, and which—as it is the only way possible—has been developed through propaganda.

But we also do this in the sense of Blanqui: the revolutionary organization will naturally be considered criminal until the old order of bourgeois ownership of the means of production that criminalizes us is replaced by a new order—an order that establishes the social appropriation of social production.

The law, as long as there are classes, as long as human beings dominate other human beings, is a question of power.

The RAF Prisoners

August 19, 1975

THE BOMB ATTACK IN MUNICH CENTRAL STATION

In order to create greater publicity for this statement from the guerilla regarding the right-wing attacks, on September 14, 1975, we announced that a bomb would explode in Munich Central Station at 6:50
PM
. At 6:55
PM
, we telephoned to direct the search to locker 2005, in which, rather than a bomb, the following statement was found:

Disappointed that once again there is no “bloodbath” to blame on “violent anarchists,” as was the case in Birmingham,
¹
in Milan,
²
and most recently here at home, in Bremen in December 74, and yesterday in Hamburg?

This is to make something perfectly clear to you cops and those of you on the editorial staffs of the newspapers and the radio stations:

The guerilla’s statements and practice show that their attacks are directed against the ruling class and their resistance is against the system’s oppression.

• In June 72, the police tried to create panic in Stuttgart with bomb threats. They used the World Cup to threaten thousands with claims that the guerilla planned rocket attacks against football stadiums. As part of their intimidation, they spoke of a plan to poison the drinking water in Baden-Würrtemberg. In Bremen, in December 74, and yesterday in Hamburg, provocateurs acted for real: explosives were set off in the midst of large groups of people. Without any consideration for the health and wellbeing of the people, they turned their threats into deeds, doing everything they can to increase the agitation against the radical left and the guerilla.

• The guerilla in Germany has attacked the U.S. Army, which was engaged in a war against the Vietnamese people. The guerilla has bombed the Federal Constitutional Court, the capitalist associations, and the enemies of the Chilean and Palestinian people. They kidnapped the CDU leader Lorenz to gain the freedom of political prisoners. They struggle against rising prices and the increased pressure brought to bear on the people, e.g., the Berlin transit price actions.
³

We demand that the press, the radios, and TV broadcast this statement!

We are the urban guerilla groups

Red Army Faction
2nd of June Movement
Revolutionary Cells

And above all struggle against those who are responsible for planning and carrying out the attacks in Bremen and Hamburg. The choice of targets shows who the culprits are. […]
⁴

Red Army Faction

2nd of June Movement

Revolutionary Cells

September 14, 1975

In the face of the state propaganda effort to tie the attack at the Hamburg Central Station to the RAF, we state clearly: the nature of this explosion speaks the language of reaction. It can only be understood as part of the psychological war that state security is waging against the urban guerilla. The method and objective of this crime against the people bear the mark of a fascist provocation.

The political-military actions of the urban guerilla are never directed against the people. The RAF’s attacks target the imperialist apparatus, its military, political, economic, and cultural institutions and its functionaries in the repressive and ideological state structures.

In its offensive against the state, the urban guerilla cannot resort to terrorism as a weapon. The urban guerilla operates in the rift between the state and the masses, working to widen it and to develop political consciousness, revolutionary solidarity, and proletarian power against the state.

In opposition to this, this intelligence service-directed terrorist provocation against the people is meant to increase fear and strengthen the people’s identification with the state. At the Hessen Forum, Wassermann, the President of the Braunschweig Court of Appeals explained the state security countertactic—in his words, one must “increase citizens’ feelings of insecurity” and “act on the basis of this subjective feeling of fear.”

In the meantime, the
Frankfurter Rundschau
report (September 9) confirmed that the state security counter-operations conducted since 72 (bomb threats against Stuttgart, threats to poison drinking water, stolen stocks of mustard gas, SAM rocket attacks on football stadiums, the bomb attack on Bremen Central Station and now in Hamburg) were developed from programs created by the CIA. The FR is only substantiating what has been known for a long time now, that the use of poison in subway tunnels and the contamination of drinking water in large cities is a special warfare countertactic, a “psychological operation” of intelligence services and counterguerilla units.

At this point, the question to be answered is whether the attack in Hamburg was the act of a lone criminal, of the radical right-wing Bremen group under intelligence service control, of state security itself,
or of the special CIA counterinsurgency unit established at the American embassy in Bonn after Stockholm.

What is certain is that state security works within the reactionary structures through a network of state security journalists who use the media conglomerates and public institutions to attack the urban guerilla. High profile figures in this network close to the BKA’s press office and the BAW press conferences are Krumm of the
Frankfurter Rundschau,
Busche of the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
Leicht and Kuchnert of the
Süddeutsche Zeitung,
and Rieber and Zimmermann, who are published in many national newspapers. Zimmermann’s article about the alleged connection between the attack, the RAF, the 2nd of June Movement, and Siegfried Haag was simultaneously published in eight national newspapers.

The incredible fact that state reaction is now resorting to such measures against the weak urban guerilla here simply indicates the strategic importance of this instability for the Federal Republic as part of the U.S. imperialist chain of states. In the North-South and East-West conflicts, the FRG is a central base of operations for U.S. imperialism; militarily in NATO, economically in the European Community, politically and ideologically through the Social Democrats and their leadership role in the Socialist International.

The state’s attempt to use its intelligence services to provoke a reactionary mass mobilization is not a response to the guerilla, but is rather a reaction to strategic conditions; namely, the economic and political weakness of the U.S. chain of states. They are responding to the future potential and current reality of revolutionary politics. The objective and function of psychological warfare, in the way it is being waged against every democratic initiative, is to cause splits, isolation, withdrawal and eventually extermination.

Marx said, “Revolutionary progress disrupts the course of a closed and powerful counterrevolution by producing rebels who convert the party of resistance into a truly revolutionary party.”
¹

The urban guerilla has shown that the only way to resist state terror is through armed proletarian politics.

The RAF Prisoners

Stammheim

September 23, 1975

On the night of November 11-12, state security agents and/or fascists again set off a bomb in a train station—first Hamburg and Nuremberg, and now Cologne.

The federal government’s Terrorism Division and the cops hoped to create a bloodbath with this pointless act of terrorism. In Bremen and Hamburg, the bombs exploded on Federal Football League game days. In Cologne, the Carnival began on November 11, certainly a night when many people would be out; it was only by chance that no one was injured. […]

The urban guerilla has often stated, and has proven through its practice since 1970, that its actions are never and have never been directed against the people. […]
¹

Red Army Faction

2nd of June Movement

Revolutionary Cells

November 1975

O
N MAY 9, 1976, THE
state announced that Ulrike Meinhof had committed suicide.

Government officials claimed that the guerilla leader had hanged herself following a period of extreme depression provoked by tension with her co-defendants, particularly Andreas Baader.

The prisoners’ lawyers responded to the alleged suicide almost immediately. One of her attorneys, Michael Oberwinder, challenged the claim that Meinhof had been suffering from extreme depression:

I myself talked with Frau Meinhof… last Wednesday… regarding the suits. There was not the least sign of disinterest on her part, rather we had an animated discussion in the context of which Frau Meinhof explained the group’s point of view.
²

He further added:

If Federal Prosecutor Kaul, as it says here, speaks of a certain coldness between Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader, that is a monstrous claim that doesn’t correspond to reality.

Defense attorney Otto Schily further posed some interesting questions:

Why didn’t they allow a trusted doctor chosen by (Meinhof’s) sister to assist in the autopsy? Why the suspicious haste regarding the autopsy?
¹

Her attorney Axel Azzola dismissed the theory out of hand:

The authorities are responsible for her death. There is no such thing as suicide. There are only the pursuers and the pursued.
2

The defense attorneys called for an independent investigation. As a result, on July 16, 1976, an International Investigatory Commission into the Death of Ulrike Meinhof was formed;
³
its findings, delivered on December 15, 1978, revealed compelling evidence that Meinhof had been brutally raped and murdered.

In examining the autopsy report, the Commission uncovered a series of medical contradictions. A group of English doctors noted the absence of usual signs of asphyxiation, the normal cause of death in a suicide by hanging:

The report mentions neither bulging of the eyes or tongue, nor a cyanosis (bruising) of the face, habitual signs of death by asphyxiation. In spite of the fracture of the hyoid bone at the base of the tongue, there is no swelling of the neck in the area of the mark left by the “rope made from a bath towel” from which the prisoner was hanging. The negative results are irregular for a death by asphyxiation, that is the least we can say. On the other hand, they fit a death by pneumo-cartic compression very well, that is to say a death by pressure on the carotid artery, which can provoke death by a reflexive cardiac arrest.

To many supporters, this evidence seemed to indicate that Meinhof was strangled to death before being hanged.

Furthermore, the autopsy results suggested to the Commission that Meinhof had been raped before she was murdered:

The two autopsy reports mention a marked edema in the external genital area and swelling of the two calves. The two reports mention an abrasion covered with clotted blood on the left buttock. The Janssen report also mentions an ecchymosis on the right hip. The chemical analysis for sperm had, according to the official statement, a positive result, in spite of the absence of spermatozoa.
4

A letter from Dr. Klaus Jarosch, a professor at the University of Linz, to defense attorney Michael Oberwinder, dated August 17, 1976, concurred with the opinion of the English doctors: “It certainly does not appear to be a typical death by asphyxiation due to hanging….”
⁵

There were several problems with the claim that Meinhof had used her prison towel to fashion a rope for hanging herself. Both the report of West German neuropsychiatrist Hans-Joachim Meyer
⁶
and that of the Stuttgart-based Technical Institute of Criminology
⁷
noted discrepancies in the width and length of the towel-rope found in Meinhof’s cell, and the other towels in Stammheim. Furthermore, the TIC noted that neither Meinhof’s scissors nor the table knife in her cell had any traces of fiber on them, raising the question of how the towel would have been cut.
⁸
Finally, RAF prisoner Ingrid Schubert declared that the prisoners had carried out a series of tests with their own prison issue towels, and
that neither new nor old towels had managed to bear a weight of more than fifty kilos without tearing out of the window grating.
¹