The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (75 page)
Read The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 Online
Authors: J. Smith
• the worst methods of psychological and physical torture and murder are used against fighters for freedom and national liberation.
• forms of collective punishment are practiced.
• all guarantees of international law, such as laws governing the humane treatment of prisoners, a just trial, and a defense are completely abolished.
While the Zionist regime is the most authentic and practical continuation of Naziism, the government in Bonn and the Parties in parliament do their best to revive Naziism and expansionist racism, especially amongst military personnel and within the other State institutions.
Economic circles and the magnates of multinational corporations play an effective role in these efforts. Ponto, Schleyer, and Buback are blatant examples of persons who have effectively served old Naziism and who now, in practice, execute the goals of the Neo-Nazis in Bonn and the Zionists in Tel-Aviv, both locally and internationally.
Part of the anti-guerilla strategy of the enemies is non-acquiescence to the legitimate demands with the goal of freeing our imprisoned revolutionaries, who suffer the most cruel forms of torture with the silent awareness of the international public. We declare that this will not succeed. We will force the enemy to free our prisoners, who daily defy them by fighting oppression, even in prison.
VICTORY FOR THE UNITY OF ALL REVOLUTIONARY
STRENGTH IN THE WORLD
Struggle Against World Imperialism Organization
October 13, 1977
To the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of West Germany
this is to inform you that the passengers and the crew of the LH 737 plane, flight no. 181 leaving from Palma to Frankfurt, are under our complete control and responsibility. the lives of the passengers and the crew of the plane as well as the life of Mr. Hanns-Martin Schleyer depends on your fulfilling the following—
1. Release of the following comrades of the RAF from prisons in West Germany—Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, Verena Becker, Werner Hoppe, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Hanna Krabbe, Bernd Roessner, Ingrid Schubert, Irmgard Moeller, Guenter Sonnenberg—and with each the amount of
DM
100,000.
2. Release of the following Palestinian comrades of PFLP from prison in Istanbul—Mahdi and Hussein.
3. The payment of the sum of $15 million U.S. dollars according to accompanying instructions.
4. Arrange with any one of the following countries to accept to receive all the comrades released from prison:
1. Democratic Republic of Vietnam
2. Republic of Somalia
3. People’s Democratic Republic of Jemen
5. The german prisoners should be transported by plane, which you should provide, to their point of destination. they should fly via Istanbul to take in the two Palestinian comrades released from Istanbul prison.
the turkish government is well informed about our demands. the prisoners should all together reach their point of destination before Sunday, 16th of Oct. 1977, 8.00 o’clock a.m. GMT. the money should be delivered according to accompanying instructions within the same period of time.
6. If all the prisoners are not released and do not reach their point of destination, and the money is not delivered according to instructions, within the specified time, then Mr. Hanns-Martin Schleyer, and all the passengers and the crew of the LH 737 plane, flight no. 181 will be killed immediately.
7. If you comply with our instructions all of them will be released.
8. We shall not contact you again. This is our last contact with you. You are completely to blame for any error or faults in the release of the above mentioned comrades in prison or in the delivery of the specified ransom according to the specified instructions.
9. Any try on your part to delay or deceive us will mean immediate ending of the ultimatum and execution of Mr. Hanns-Martin Schleyer and all the passengers and the crew of the plane.
S.A.W.I.O.
October 13, 1977
After 43 days, we have put an end to Hanns Martin Schleyer’s pitiful and corrupt existence. From the moment he began his power play, Herr Schmidt gambled with the possibility of Schleyer’s death: he can find him on rue Charles Peguy in Mulhouse in a green Audi 100 with Bad Homburg license plates.
As compensation for our pain and suffering over the massacres in Mogadishu and Stammheim, his death is meaningless. Andreas, Gudrun, Jan, Irmgard, and ourselves, we are not surprised by the dramatic and fascist methods the imperialists use to exterminate the liberation movements. We will never forget Schmidt and the alliance that participated in this bloodbath.
THE STRUGGLE HAS ONLY BEGUN.
FREEDOM THROUGH ARMED ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLE
Siegfried Hausner Commando
October 19, 1977
77: Living With The Fallout The movement was under total observation—the BKA thought that Schleyer was hidden outside of Germany, so they wanted to follow any thread and not arrest people. I don’t think that movement people were at all involved in the kidnapping, but the state knew that the third generation came out of the prison support movement so they watched every move. They were looking all over Europe. I was in the United States at the time and they raided the house of friends I was staying with. A friend of mine was traveling in Italy on his motorcycle and was followed by Italian cops from village to village. Every time we crossed the border going to Switzerland, for example, they would stop the car three kilometers before the border on the autobahn and wait for us with machine guns. We were anti-imps visiting prisoners, leafleting, spray-painting, etc. Often when I left the prison after a visit, I would be searched, as would my car, by very nervous young cops with machineguns. When I went to political meetings, they followed us openly. But they didn’t arrest us. It scared people away, of course. It split the movement, and it pushed others underground. It made me personally feel very determined and hateful. The state built an enormous data bank. Cases came to light where people were listed as “terrorists” because of who they were sitting next to on the train. There were street controls of cars, and people had to show their passports all the time. |
Publishers and bookstores had a very hard time, were raided. Although they did not agree with the RAF, they did it for freedom of speech. Trials and more trials. For every leaflet there was a big debate. Did you put it on the counter or not. New laws: §88a and §130 made it impossible to publish anything, for instance like the book you are planning now. You had to hide the typewriter, get it published in Holland, bring it back across the border—really hard—distribute it illegally. Homes were raided to take away typewriters and papers. Trials and more trials. With §129a, everything counted as support. So the left had to spend a lot of energy on defense stuff. But only individuals were arrested not whole groups or meetings… I moved quite often during those years, and every single time the cops went to my neighbors or landlords and asked them to take note of the people who visited me. My neighbors always told me this—smile. We never spoke on the phone, not about politics, and especially not about love affairs, friends etc., because we didn’t want to help them complete their psychological profiles. This is part of why I was so shocked when later all the letters from the prisoners, showing their fights, were published. We tried not to visit nonpolitical friends in order to protect them, and then that led to our isolation, and it definitely added to the hate we felt. It was very hard on the lawyers. When Croissant fled to France and asked for political asylum, it was a great propaganda coup, but also very real—they wanted to bury him in prison. When I visited him in Stammheim prison, he told me that he was scared because he found a razor blade in his cupboard, which he took as a hint that he should kill himself.
|
The Stammheim Deaths
Murder would make the better story. I looked under every rock. I spent weeks and months following up every lead, and the simple truth is there is nothing that allows you to truly maintain that it was clearly either a murder or a suicide.
Stefan Aust
1
It remains for me a suicide under state surveillance. There are enough reasons to believe that someone in the state apparatus knew about the weapons and the suicide plan. This doubtless indicates the hope that they would die. And so I say: there is no clear distinction in this case between murder and suicide.
Karl-Heinz Dellwo
2
Today, thirty years later, just as before, I don’t in any way believe the suicide version. Not because I’ve never had doubts. Not because I’ve never permitted myself to speculate in various ways. Not because I never despaired in the face of the unlimited pressure of the campaign that I, like the other prisoners, experienced from the outset: not supported by facts, but rather continuously bringing it in line with the official versions, insinuations, misrepresentations, lies. No, what always made me skeptical of every new “incontravertible proof” was that I knew them—the dead—better than to be affected by everything that was produced.
Ronald Augustin
1
Irmgard Möller stated: at no time was there a suicide pact between Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and herself. She did not attempt suicide. The four stab wounds on the left side of her chest were not self-inflicted. Her last recollection before losing consciousness was two distant bangs and a high-pitched noise. This occurred Tuesday, October 18, 1977, at 4:30
AM
.
Jutta Bahr-Jentges, Irmgard Möller’s attorney
2
W
ITHIN FIVE MONTHS OF THEIR
deaths, a government commission of inquiry ruled that Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader had killed themselves in a “collective suicide.”
3
Much as in the case of Meinhof’s death, in time the available historical sources would come to almost unanimously parrot the state’s suicide story, generally with a dismissive reference to “conspiracy theories” some extremists might hold to the contrary. In both cases, evidence which points to state murder is simply never mentioned, leaving casual readers with the impression that any such claims must indeed be evidence of the irrationality or cultishness of the guerilla’s supporters.
Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader
One sign of how far removed we are today from the RAF’s heyday is that for some years now, certain former guerillas have been echoing the state’s claims of suicide. While these former guerillas were themselves not held at Stammheim, and so have no more direct knowledge than we do about what happened, such claims are deeply disturbing to those who supported the RAF for many years. As we have seen, outrage at the treatment of the prisoners, the torture and abuse which seemed to culminate in these murders, was the key factor bringing in new supporters throughout the seventies. Many of these people are now confronted with the painful possibility that the guerilla was willing to so cynically manipulate their feelings.