RAF Clues Ignored?
May 2, 2007
The investigations had neglected two witness testimonies that suggested the gunshots fired from a motorcycle that killed his father and two companions may have come from a woman, said Michael Buback in a contribution to the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily on Wednesday.
The question of who actually shot Siegfried Buback in April 1977 remains unresolved. Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms re-opened the case this month after former RAF member Peter-Jürgen Boock indicated that Christian Klar, who had been sentenced to jail for numerous murders carried out by the extreme left-wing terrorists, was not the killer.
Michael Buback wrote that one witness, who said he had been sitting in his parked car next that of Siegfried Buback, heard the shots and saw two masked figures on a motorcycle. The passenger had been holding a gun and could have been a woman, the man said in a newspaper article from the time.
Buback wrote that another person had seen the motorcycle on the day before the assassination and had given testimony that the passenger sitting behind the driver was "small and delicate."
Buback said he had been irritated that only Knut Folkerts, Christian Klar and Günter Sonnenberg were mentioned as the perpetrators, although none of the men was shorter than 1.80 meters (5 feet 9 inches).
Fresh suspicions
Some German press reports have suggested that former RAF member Verena Becker fired the shots. She had reportedly used the same machine gun that killed Siegfried Buback during her arrested in 1977.
Buback called on the federal prosecutor's office to explain why the two witnesses had not been asked to identify the people they had seen in a police line-up.
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.