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Clemency Decision Coming

DW staff (sms)May 5, 2007

President Köhler has met with Christian Klar, a member of the RAF terrorist group that plunged the country into deep uncertainty in the 1970s, in connection with Klar's application for clemency, Köhler's office said.

https://p.dw.com/p/ANkS
Germany remains divided on whether to pardon convicted RAF terrorists like KlarImage: picture-alliance/ dpa

Köhler had met Klar, who turns 55 later this month, in a southern German prison on Friday, a spokesman said, confirming a report published in the news magazine Der Spiegel. Köhler is to announce his decision on the clemency application during the course of the week.

Klar, who was sentenced to life in prison for the 1977 assassination of Chief Prosecutor Siegfried Buback and the abduction and murder the same year of employers' federation chief Hanns-Martin Schleyer, has been in jail for the past 24 years.

There is strong opposition in Germany to Klar's release, not least because he and other members of the "Rote Armee Fraktion" -- also known as the Baader-Meinhoff gang -- have refused to reveal details of the killings.

Klar called for "completing the defeat of the plans of capital and opening the door for a different future" in a letter read at a left-wing conference in January.

Conservatives against pardon

Horst Köhler am Schreibtisch
A pardon could endanger Köhler's political futureImage: AP

Rumors have spread that politicians in the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, would vote against a second term for Köhler, should he decide to pardon Klar, according to Der Speigel.

Many in Germany also expressed their anger last month when Klar was granted supervised day-long outings from prison.

"It is a core concern of the conservatives that terrorists who do not show any remorse are not released early," said Markus Söder, the CSU's general secretary.

Earlier in the week the German news magazine Stern reported that Köhler was leaning toward clemency for Klar, whose mandatory jail sentence will expire in 2009. The president's office would not comment on the Stern report.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt, regarded as the main organizing force behind the second RAF generation after Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhoff and others were jailed, was released in March after serving 24 years. A total of eight RAF terrorists have been pardoned since 1988.

Lasting impression in Germany

Die entführte Lufthansa-Maschine Landshut, Terrorismus, RAF
Police stormed a hijacked Lufthansa plane in 1977Image: AP

The events of 1977, still known as the "German Autumn," culminated in a spectacular hijacking and Baader's suicide.

In October of that year, Palestinian terrorists, acting in concert with the RAF, hijacked a Lufthansa passenger jet to Mogadishu in Somalia in an attempt to press the German government to release Baader and others.

The successful storming of the aircraft by German police led Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe to commit suicide in the Stammheim prison built especially to house them. Meinhoff had committed suicide in 1976.