Daniela Klette of Baader-Meinhof gang remanded in custody
A former member of the radical anti-capitalist Baader-Meinhof gang arrested in Berlin last week after 30 years on the run has been remanded in custody over three violent attacks in the 1990s.
Police swooped on Daniela Klette, 65, at an apartment in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district on 26 February. They called it a “milestone” as Klette was one of the most wanted people in Europe.
The former member of the group also known as the Red Army Faction, which carried out bombings, kidnappings and killings starting in the 1970s, had apparently been living undercover in the bohemian neighbourhood for 20 years.
Klette made an initial appearance in court and was formally arrested – the first stage towards being charged – on Thursday over three attacks allegedly carried out by the gang, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
In February 1990, she allegedly played a role in an assault on a Deutsche Bank building in Eschborn, near Frankfurt.
Gang members parked a car filled with 45kg (99lb) of explosives outside the building but the detonator failed to go off, prosecutors said.
Klette is also believed to have been involved in an Red Army Faction attack on the US embassy in Bonn, the German capital at the time, in 1991.
The third accusation relates to a 1993 explosives attack against a prison still under construction in Germany’s Hesse state.
Members of the gang scaled the prison wall, overpowered security guards and removed them from the prison grounds in a van before detonating several explosives inside.
The Baader-Meinhof gang, named after early leaders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, took up arms against what it saw as US imperialism and a “fascist” German state that was still riddled with former Nazis.
Klette was part of a trio from the socalled “third generation” of the group active in the 1980s and 1990s, alongside fellow members Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, who remain on the run.
After the gang disbanded in 1998, the trio are believed to have financed their lives in hiding with robberies of money transporters and supermarkets.
Klette’s arrest last week was related to her suspected involvement in an attempted murder and various robberies between 1999 and 2016.
The accusations are being dealt with by regional prosecutors, while the allegations from the 1990s come under the remit of federal authorities.
Police still searching for Staub and Garweg have raided several premises in Berlin in recent days.