Former RAF terrorist: In the end it was just "perfected killing"

RAF terrorist Daniela Klette will soon be on trial. Before the trial begins, an ex-terrorist speaks bluntly about the group's actions.

Former RAF terrorist Silke Maier-Witt has strongly condemned the alleged crimes of Daniela Klette. Klette and Burkhard Garweg - also once RAF members - are "pensioners who finance their living by attacking and traumatizing people," said Maier-Witt in an interview with the magazine "Stern." "That's not revolutionary. It's just sad," said the 75-year-old.

Maier-Witt was involved in the kidnapping of the employers' president Hanns Martin Schleyer in 1977 and is considered a member of the so-called second generation of the "Red Army Faction" (RAF). Klette and Garweg are classified as belonging to the third generation. A year ago, Klette was arrested in Berlin and is accused of several robberies, illegal possession of weapons and attempted murder. Her trial will begin at the end of March at the Verden Regional Court.

At the start of the trial, Klette wants to make a statement. "Ms. Klette will make a short statement on the first day of the trial," said her defense attorney Lukas Theune on Tuesday. She is looking at the proceedings "combatively."

According to investigators, Garweg, who is still in hiding, was most recently living on a trailer park in Berlin. In a "letter from illegality" he recently linked himself and Klette to the global struggles against capitalism, the climate crisis, patriarchy and racism . When asked about this, Maier-Witt told "stern": "Garweg with his trailer stories on a stage with the great revolutionaries! That's funny again, isn't it?".

The trial against Klette at the Verden Regional Court is scheduled to begin on March 25. It concerns 13 robberies. The prosecution accuses the 66-year-old of attempted murder, illegal possession of weapons and attempted and completed aggravated robbery.

The trio Klette, Staub and Garweg are said to have robbed armored cars and supermarkets in Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein between 1999 and 2016 in order to finance their underground life. They are said to have stolen 2.7 million euros in the crimes. According to the indictment, they threatened their victims with firearms or stun guns. Klette was reportedly usually the driver of the getaway car.

Maier-Witt said of her own time in the left-wing extremist terrorist group that the RAF had ultimately become nothing but "perfected killing". After Schleyer's murder, she read that he had been killed with a shot in the back of the neck. "Then I thought: these are SS methods, so that's where you've arrived now. That's the bitter part: we wanted to do everything differently - but in the end we were like the SS."