The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (88 page)

October 6, 1975
A bomb is discovered in the Nuremberg train station. Although the RAF is blamed by police and the media, the RAF, the 2JM, and the RZ all distance themselves from the action.

November 12, 1975
A bomb explodes in the Cologne Central Station. The RAF, the 2JM, and the RZ issue a common statement denouncing the bombing as a police counterinsurgency action.

December 16–24, 1975
Police carry out raids of left bookstores, publishers, printing presses, and housing collectives throughout West Germany.

December 21, 1975
An OPEC Conference in Vienna, Austria is raided by a mixed Palestinian/West German commando calling itself the
Bewegung 21. Dezember der arabischen Revolution
(December 21st Movement of the Arabic Revolution), under the leadership of the Venezuelan Carlos. They take the Oil Ministers hostage. One guerilla, RZ member Hans-Joachim Klein, is severely injured in an exchange of fire in the OPEC office, which also leaves Austrian police officer Anton Tichler, Iraqi guard Khalifi, and a Libyan Oil Ministry representative Yousef Ismirili dead. 2JM member Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann is identified as the shooter. In exchange for the hostages the guerillas receive a $5 million ransom and are flown to Algeria.

1976
January 13, 1976
The trial of RAF prisoners Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe begins.

January 16, 1976
The West German parliament passes §88a, a censorship law, under which, effective May 1 of that year, writing, producing, publishing, distributing, advertising, selling, or displaying materials “glorifying acts of violence” is a criminal offense subject to a maximum three year jail sentence.

January 20, 1976
RAF prisoner Ulrike Meinhof’s attorney Axel Azzola puts forward a motion that the defendants in the Stammheim trial be recognized as POWS.

March 16, 1976
The Hamburg LG sentences RAF member turned state witness Gerhard Müller to ten years in prison. In exchange for his cooperation, Müller is never charged with the murder of police officer Norbert Schmid. Instead, he is released after six and a half years, paid 500,000 DM, and relocated to the U.S.A.
RAF member Irmgard Möller is sentenced to four and a half years.

May 4, 1976
Attorneys for RAF prisoners Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe petition to have Richard Nixon, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Georg Kiesinger, and Walter Scheel called as witnesses in an attempt to prove that U.S. activity in Southeast Asia violated international law, making the RAF attacks legitimate and legal under international law. The petition is rejected.

May 6, 1976
The trial of the members of the RAF Holger Meins Commando, Hanna Krabbe, Lutz Taufer, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, and Bernd Rössner begins.

May 7, 1976
Police Chief Fritz Sippel is shot in Sprendlingen. It is believed that RAF members Peter-Jürgen Boock and Rolf Clemens Wagner are the shooters.

May 9, 1976
RAF member Ulrike Meinhof is found hanged in her cell. The state claims it is a suicide. Fellow prisoners and supporters assert that it is murder. An International Commission will eventually rule that the evidence indicates rape and murder.

May 10, 1976
In response to Ulrike Meinhof’s murder there are riots in West Berlin and a molotov cocktail attack on the
Land
Courthouse in Wuppertal.

May 11, 1976
RAF prisoner Jan-Carl Raspe makes a brief statement during the Stammheim trial and releases a package of documents that indicate Meinhof’s state of mind at the time of her death and the unlikelihood that she committed suicide. In response to Ulrike Meinhof’s murder, there is rioting in Frankfurt, during which a police officer is severely burned when a molotov cocktail explodes in his car.

May 14, 1976
In response to Ulrike Meinhof’s murder, the Stachus Shopping Centre in Munich is bombed.
Police raid a dozen collective houses in Frankfurt, arresting fourteen people on a variety of charges relating to the May 11 riot, including attempted murder. All are released the next day.

May 14–16, 1976
Thirty-six women hunger strike in Hessen prison in response to Meinhof’s murder.

May 16, 1976
Ulrike Meinhof is buried in West Berlin. Following the funeral, there is a massive demonstration.

May 18, 1976
Eight thousand demonstrate in West Berlin against murder of Meinhof. Clashes with the police lead to numerous arrests.

June 2, 1976
The RZ’s Ulrike Meinhof Commando bombs the Headquarters of the U.S. Army and U.S. Officers Club in Frankfurt.
A group calling itself the Friends of the 2nd of June firebombs two fully loaded military trucks at the U.S. Air Force Base in Frankfurt.

June 5–7, 1976
The
Sozialistisches Büro
organizes an Anti-Repression Congress in Frankfurt. Twenty thousand people take part. Attorney Klaus Croissant is among the speakers, as is
sponti
leader Joschka Fischer, who makes a historic speech urging the radical left to reject the armed struggle.

June 10, 1976
The Interior Ministers Conference gives the police the right to shoot to kill when dealing with suspected terrorists.

June 14, 1976
Twenty-four attorneys for political prisoners release a statement protesting the murder of Ulrike Meinhof, as well as isolation and torture.

June 16, 1976
Five former intelligence agents, including Winslow Peck (National Security Agency - Airforce), Gary P. Thomas (Military Intelligence) and Philip Agee (CIA), testify in Stammheim about the use of West German territory by the U.S. for the Vietnamese War effort.

June 18, 1976
The office of Klaus Jürgen Langner, Margrit Schiller’s attorney, is firebombed. Seven people are injured.

June 24, 1976
The West German parliament passes legislation integrating §129a, which illegalizes “supporting or participating in a terrorist organization,” into the Basic Law.

June 30, 1976
Attorney Klaus Croissant is banned from taking on any more political cases.

July 1976
The influential French monthly newspaper
Le Monde Diplomatique
interviews the RAF prisoners and their attorneys.

July 7, 1976
RAF member Monika Berberich and 2JM members, Juliane Plambeck, Gabriele Rollnick, and Inge Viett overpower a guard and scale the wall, escaping from the Lehrter Women’s Prison in West Berlin.

July 16, 1976
Attorney Klaus Croissant is arrested and charged with supporting a criminal organization after he announces the formation of an International Commission into the death of Ulrike Meinhof.

July 21, 1976
Rolf Pohle, one of the prisoners exchanged for Peter Lorenz in 1975, is arrested by West German police in Athens, Greece.
RAF member Monika Berberich, who escaped from a West Berlin prison with three other women on July 7, is rearrested.

August 18–19, 1976
Left bookstores and publishers in West Berlin, Hamburg, Bochum, Essen, Cologne, Heidelberg, Tübingen, and Munich are raided in connection with §88a. Books and magazines are seized and a Bochum book dealer is arrested and held for a week.

July 22, 1976
RAF prisoner Brigitte Mohnhaupt testifies at the Stammheim trial refuting most of Gerhard Müller’s testimony.

October 1, 1976
In spite of protests, Greece, under extreme pressure including threats of economic sanctions, extradites Rolf Pohle to West Germany.

November 10, 1976
Ministers from nineteen EEC countries establish the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism.

November 30, 1976
RAF members Siegfried Haag and Roland Mayer are arrested on the Frankfurt-Kassel highway. Chief Federal Prosecutor, Siegfried Buback, claims that they were in possession of a variety of weapons at the time of the arrest. Attorney Klaus Croissant is denied the right to represent Haag.

December 1976
A section of the RZ releases an open letter criticizing the RAF’s strategy and dogmatism.

December 8, 1976
Attorney Brigitte Tilgener is denied the right to represent RAF prisoner Siegfried Haag.

December 10, 1976
The BAW accuses attorney Hans-Christian Ströbele of supporting a terrorist organization and applies for a
Berufsverbot
against him.

December 13, 1976
Attorneys Klaus Croissant and Hans-Christian Ströbele are denied the right to represent RAF prisoner Brigitte Mohnhaupt.

December 14, 1976
RAF member Waltraud Boock is arrested in Vienna, Austria following a bank robbery.

December 15, 1976
One of attorney Klaus Croissant’s secretaries is offered several thousand DM by the
Verfassungsschutz
for copies of legal notes and clients names.

December 17, 1976
There is a bomb attack against the Vienna, Austria Police Information Centre demanding the release of RAF member Waltraud Boock. This is followed by two bomb threats with the same demand.

December 21, 1976
Attorney General Siegfried Buback requests that attorney Jürgen Laubacher be denied the right to represent RAF prisoner Siegfried Haag, because he has previously represented political prisoners.

1977
January 10, 1977
RAF prisoner Monika Berberich responds critically to the RZ’s open letter of December 1976, which criticized the RAF’s strategy and dogmatism.

January 12, 1977
Defense attorney Otto Schily launches a motion of non-confidence against Theodor Prinzing, the judge in the Stammheim trial, when it is discovered that he has leaked the trial tapes to the media, in spite of the fact that it is illegal to make them public.

January 23, 1977
Chief Judge Theodor Prinzing is expelled from the Stammheim trial for partiality following eighty-five legal requests for his removal.

January 27, 1977
Seventeen states sign the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism in Strasbourg, France, committing them to a common struggle against terrorism.

February 4, 1977
In Vienna, RAF member Waltraud Boock is sentenced to fifteen years.

February 8, 1977
RAF member Brigitte Mohnhaupt is released from prison and immediately goes back underground.

March 17, 1977
The state admits to having bugged the cells of seven RAF prisoners, and to having listened in on the prisoners’ conversations with their attorneys. They claim, however, to have only used the bugs briefly on two occasions, during the Stockholm crisis of 1975, and briefly on one occasion in 1976. They also claim to have destroyed the tapes immediately afterwards.
The media spreads rumours that the RAF is planning to kidnap children from playgrounds.

March 29–April 30, 1977
RAF and 2JM prisoners begin the 4th collective hunger strike, demanding POW status under the Geneva Convention, association in groups of no less than fifteen, abolition of isolation, an international investigation into the deaths of Holger Meins, Siegfried Hausner, and Ulrike Meinhof, and an end to psychological warfare through false actions and communiqués. Thirty-five prisoners participate from the outset, including Waltraud Boock in Vienna, but soon one hundred prisoners are hunger striking against brutality and force-feeding.

April 7, 1977
The RAF’s Ulrike Meinhof Commando assassinates Attorney General Siegfried Buback, riddling his car with submachine gun fire, also killing his driver, Wolfgang Göbel, and a bodyguard, Georg Wurster.
RAF prisoners are searched and the Contact Ban is applied.

April 14, 1977
The head of the BKA, Horst Herold, claims that there are between 400 and 500 terrorists with 4,000 to 5,000 sympathizers in West Germany.

April 26, 1977
Attorneys Otto Schily and Hans-Heinz Heldmann temporarily halt their pleas in the Stammheim trial to protest the bugging of their meetings with witnesses.

April 28, 1977
The Stuttgart OLG finds RAF members Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader guilty of six murders and thirty-four attempted murders in connection with six bomb attacks. They are sentenced to life plus fifteen years. The so-called Stammheim trial lasts two years, including 192 days of testimony and costs $15 million.

April 30, 1977
The Minister of Justice for Baden-Wurttemburg rules that the RAF prisoners’ demands for association must be met. In response to this gesture, the prisoners end their hunger strike. Shortly thereafter work begins on the seventh floor of Stammheim to allow the association of sixteen prisoners.

May 2, 1977
The weekly news journal
Spiegel
prints poll results claiming 50% of West German citizens want the reinstatement of the dead wing in prisons. Thirty-five thousand people sign a petition to this effect.

May 3, 1977
RAF members Günter Sonnenberg and Verena Becker, formerly of the 2JM, are arrested in the German-Swiss border town of Singen. Sonnenberg is shot in the head and Becker in the leg. Sonnenberg is suspected in the Buback assassination and Becker has been wanted ever since she was freed through the Lorenz kidnapping.

May 5, 1977
RAF supporters Uwe Folkerts and Johannes Thimme are arrested in connection with the Buback assassination.

May 13, 1977
RAF member Irene Goergens is released from prison.

June 2, 1977
The Kaiserslautern LG sentences RAF members Manfred Grashof and Klaus Jünschke to life in prison. Wolfgang Grundmann is sentenced to four years.
RAF members Verena Becker and Sabine Schmitz start hunger strike for association with prisoners in Stammheim.