Victim's Son for Clemency
April 18, 2007
The Süddeutsche Zeitung daily said German President Horst Köhler would formally consider the request for clemency from Christian Klar, a convicted leader of the Red Army Faction, on Wednesday after Klar's petition received the backing of the son of slain federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback.
Buback was the first victim of a bloody period dubbed the "German Autumn" when he was shot in his car by RAF gunmen on a motorcycle in the city of Karlsruhe.
Buback's son Michael wrote in the paper that he had reliable information from anonymous sources connected to the now-disbanded group that Klar was not involved in the 1977 murder of his father.
Klar was arrested in 1982 and sentenced for his role in multiple murders.
Michael Buback said the information he had received indicated that Klar was not his father's murderer and had played no part in planning the attack.
"Naturally I must be skeptical about information from such sources," he wrote in the paper Wednesday. "It could intentionally or unintentionally be false, but it could also be true."
Clemency rejected after speech
The RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang after its founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, mounted a violent campaign against what it considered was the oppressive capitalist state of West Germany from 1977 to 1982. It targeted the German elite and the US military based in Germany. The organization, which officially disbanded in 1998, is suspected of killing 34 people.
Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who led the RAF with Klar after the group's original leaders committed suicide in jail, was released from prison in March after serving 24 years for her role in nine murders, including Buback's. Justice authorities said she no longer posed a threat to society.
But Klar's request for occasional day releases from prison was turned down in February after he called, in a speech read out on his behalf to a left-wing conference, for the "total defeat of the capitalists' aims."
Klar's sentence stipulates that he will not be eligible for parole until 2009, unless he is pardoned first.
Neither Klar nor Mohnhaupt have ever expressed remorse for the murders.