Dramatic end to ‘German Autumn’

October 18 1977 — The “German Autumn”— a six-month period of terror involving the Red Army Faction (RAF), aka the Baader-Meinhof Gang — ends dramatically. April 7: Siegfried Buback, West German attorney-general, was shot in his car in Karlsruhe. July 30: Jürgen Ponto, chairman of the Dresdner Bank, was shot in his Oberursel villa. September 5: Businessman and industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped from his car in Cologne. October 13: Lufthansa Flight 181 was hijacked by four Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine members between Palma de Mallorca and Frankfurt. They demanded the release of 10 RAF terrorists imprisoned in

Stuttgart, two Palestinians held in Turkey and $15m. The West German government refused to negotiate. The plane then landed in Rome, Cyprus, Bahrain and Dubai before reaching Aden, South Yemen, on October 16. The pilot, Jürgen Schumann, left the plane for an inspection, but was executed after re-entering. October 17: The plane landed in Mogadishu, Somalia (pictured). October 18: Within five minutes (2.07-2.12am) German commandos enter the plane, kill three terrorists, arrest one and free the 82 passengers and four crew. This triggers: 1) RAF prisoners Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe (by gunshot) and Gudrun Ensslin (hanging) commit suicide in Stuttgart. 2) Schleyer’s kidnappers shoot him in Mulhouse, France, and leave his body in the boot of a car.