Red Army Faction
The Red Army Faction (RAF, ; , ), also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang (, , active 1970–1998), was a West German far-left militant organization founded in 1970. Key early figures included Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and Horst Mahler, among others. The government of the Federal Republic of Germany considered the Red Army Faction to be a terrorist organization. The group was motivated by leftist political concerns and the perceived failure of their parents' generation to confront Germany's Nazi past, and received support from Stasi and other Eastern Bloc security services. The Red  Army Faction engaged in a series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies, and shoot-outs with police over the course of three decades. Their activity peaked in late 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as the "German Autumn". The RAF has been held responsible for 34 deaths, including industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, the Dresdner Bank head Jurgen Ponto, and the federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback, as well as many secondary targets, such as chauffeurs and bodyguards, with many others injured throughout its almost thirty years of activity; 26 RAF members or supporters were killed. Although better-known , the RAF conducted fewer attacks than the Revolutionary Cells, which is held responsible for 296 bomb attacks, arson and other attacks between 1973 and 1995. Sometimes the group is talked about in terms of generations: On 20 April 1998, an eight-page typewritten letter in German was faxed to the Reuters news agency, signed "RAF" with the submachine-gun red star, declaring that the group had dissolved. In 1999, after a robbery in Duisburg, evidence pointing to Ernst-Volker Staub and Daniela Klette was found, causing an official investigation into a re-founding. Name. The usual translation into English is  the "Red Army Faction"; however, the founders wanted it not to reflect a splinter group but rather an embryonic militant unit that was embedded, in or part of, a wider communist workers' movement, i.e. a "fraction" of a whole. The group always called itself the , never the Baader-Meinhof Group or Baader-Meinhof Gang. The name refers to all incarnations of the organization: the "first generation" RAF, which consisted of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and others; the "second generation" RAF; and the "third generation" RAF, which existed in the 1980s and 90s. The terms "Baader-Meinhof Gang" and "Baader-Meinhof Group  were first used by the media and the government. The group never used these names to refer to itself, since it viewed itself as a co-founded group consisting of numerous members and not a group with two figureheads. Background. The origins of the group can be traced back to the 1968 student protest movement in West Germany. Industrialised nations in the late 1960s experienced social upheavals related to the maturing of the baby boomers", the Cold War, and the end of colonialism. Newly found youth identity and issues such as racism, women's liberation, and anti-imperialism were at  the forefront of left-wing politics. Many young people were alienated, from both their parents and the institutions of state. The historical legacy of Nazism drove a wedge between the generations and increased suspicion of authoritarian structures in society (some analysts see the same occurring in post-fascism Italy, giving rise to ""Brigate Rosse""). In West Germany there was anger among leftist youth at the post-war denazification in West Germany and East Germany, which was perceived as a failure or as ineffective, as former (actual and supposed) Nazis held positions in government and the economy. The Communist Party of  Germany had been outlawed since 1956. Elected and appointed government positions down to the local level were often occupied by ex-Nazis. Konrad Adenauer, the first Federal Republic chancellor (in office 1949–1963), had even appointed former Nazi sympathiser Hans Globke as Director of the Federal Chancellery of West Germany (in office 1953–1963). The radicals regarded the conservative media as biased—at the time conservatives such as Axel Springer, who was implacably opposed to student radicalism, owned and controlled the conservative media including all of the most influential mass-circulation tabloid newspapers. The emergence of the Grand Coalition between the two  main parties, the SPD and CDU, with former Nazi Party member Kurt Georg Kiesinger as chancellor, occurred in 1966. This horrified many on the left and was viewed as a monolithic, political marriage of convenience with pro-NATO, pro-capitalist collusion on the part of the social democratic SPD. With about 90% of the Bundestag controlled by the coalition, an Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) was formed with the intent of generating protest and political activity outside of government. In 1972 a law was passed—the Radikalenerlass—that banned radicals or those with a "questionable" political persuasion from public sector jobs . Some radicals used the supposed association of large parts of society with Nazism as an argument against any peaceful approaches: The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by: RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof had a long history in the Communist Party. Holger Meins had studied film and was a veteran of the Berlin revolt; his short feature "How To Produce A Molotov Cocktail" was seen by huge audiences. Jan Carl Raspe lived at the Kommune 2; Horst Mahler was an established lawyer but also at the center of the anti-Springer revolt from the beginning. From their own  personal experiences and assessments of the socio-economic situation they soon became more specifically influenced by Leninism and Maoism, calling themselves "Marxist-Leninist" though they effectively added to or updated this ideological tradition. A contemporaneous critique of the Red Army Faction's view of the state, published in a pirate edition of "Le Monde Diplomatique", ascribed to it "state-fetishism"—an ideologically obsessive misreading of bourgeois dynamics and the nature and role of the state in post-WWII societies, including West Germany. It is claimed that property destruction during the Watts riots in the United States in 1965 influenced the practical  and ideological approach of the RAF founders, as well as some of those in Situationist circles. According to one former RAF member, on meetings with KGB in Dresden the group was also met by Vladimir Putin, then KGB resident in East Germany. On these meetings RAF would discuss weapons that were needed for their activities, and pass a "shopping list" to the KGB. The writings of Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse were drawn upon. Gramsci wrote on power, cultural, and ideological conflicts in society and institutions—real-time class struggles playing out in rapidly developing industrial nation states through interlinked  areas of political behavior, Marcuse on coercion and hegemony in that cultural indoctrination and ideological manipulation through the means of communication ("repressive tolerance") dispensed with the need for complete brute force in modern 'liberal democracies'. His "One-Dimensional Man" was addressed to the restive students of the sixties. Marcuse argued that only marginal groups of students and poor alienated workers could effectively resist the system. Both Gramsci and Marcuse came to the conclusion that the ideological underpinnings and the 'superstructure' of society was vitally important in the understanding of class control (and acquiescence). This could perhaps be seen as an  extension of Marx's work as he did not cover this area in detail. "Das Kapital", his mainly economic work, was meant to be one of a series of books which would have included one on society and one on the state, but his death prevented fulfillment of this. Many of the radicals felt that Germany's lawmakers were continuing authoritarian policies and the public's apparent acquiescence was seen as a continuation of the indoctrination the Nazis had pioneered in society (Volksgemeinschaft). The Federal Republic was exporting arms to African dictatorships, which was seen as supporting the war in  Southeast Asia and engineering the remilitarization of Germany with the U.S.-led entrenchment against the Warsaw Pact nations. The ongoing events further catalyzed the situation. Protests turned into riots on 2 June 1967, when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, visited West Berlin. There were protesters but also hundreds of supporters of the Shah, as well as a group of fake supporters armed with wooden staves, there to disturb the normal course of the visit. These extremists beat the protesters. After a day of angry protests by exiled Iranian radical Marxists, a group widely supported by German students, the Shah  visited the Berlin Opera, where a crowd of German student protesters gathered. During the opera house demonstrations, German student Benno Ohnesorg was shot in the head by a police officer while attending his first protest rally. The officer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was acquitted in a subsequent trial. It was later discovered that Kurras had been a member of the West Berlin communist party "SEW" and had also worked for the Stasi, though there is no indication that Kurras' killing of Ohnesorg was under anyone's, including the Stasi's, orders. Along with perceptions of state and police brutality, and widespread  opposition to the Vietnam War, Ohnesorg's death galvanized many young Germans and became a rallying point for the West German New Left. The Berlin 2 June Movement, a militant-Anarchist group, later took its name to honor the date of Ohnesorg's death. On 2 April 1968 Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader, joined by Thorwald Proll and Horst Söhnlein, set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt as a protest against the Vietnam war. They were arrested two days later. On 11 April 1968 Rudi Dutschke, a leading spokesman for protesting students, was shot in the head in an  assassination attempt by the right-wing sympathizer Josef Bachmann. Although badly injured, Dutschke returned to political activism with the German Green Party before his death in a bathtub in 1979, as a consequence of his injuries. Axel Springer's populist newspaper "Bild-Zeitung", which had run headlines such as "Stop Dutschke now!", was accused of being the chief culprit in inciting the shooting. Meinhof commented, "If one sets a car on fire, that is a criminal offence. If one sets hundreds of cars on fire, that is political action." Formation. All four of the defendants charged with arson and endangering  human life were convicted, for which they were sentenced to three years in prison. In June 1969, however, they were temporarily paroled under an amnesty for political prisoners, but in November of that year, the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) demanded that they return to custody. Only Horst Söhnlein complied with the order; the rest went underground and made their way to France, where they stayed for a time in a house owned by prominent French journalist and revolutionary, Régis Debray, famous for his friendship with Che Guevara and the "foco" theory of guerrilla warfare. Eventually they made their way to  Italy, where the lawyer Mahler visited them and encouraged them to return to Germany with him to form an underground guerrilla group. The Red Army Faction was formed with the intention of complementing the plethora of revolutionary and radical groups across West Germany and Europe, as a more class conscious and determined force compared with some of its contemporaries. The members and supporters were already associated with the 'Revolutionary Cells' and 2 June Movement as well as radical currents and phenomena such as the Socialist Patients' Collective, Kommune 1 and the Situationists. Baader was arrested again in April 1970, but  on 14 May 1970 he was freed by Meinhof and others. Less than a month later, Gudrun Ensslin wrote an article in a West Berlin underground paper by the name of "Agit883 (Magazine for Agitation and Social Practice)", demanding for a call to arms and a building of the Red Army. The article ended with the words, "Develop the class struggles. Organize the proletariat. Start the armed resistance!" Baader, Ensslin, Mahler, and Meinhof then went to Jordan, where they trained with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas and looked to the Palestinian  cause for inspiration and guidance. But RAF organization and outlook were also partly modeled on the Uruguayan Tupamaros movement, which had developed as an urban resistance movement, effectively inverting Che Guevara's Mao-like concept of a peasant or rural-based guerrilla war and instead situating the struggle in the metropole or cities. Many members of the RAF operated through a single contact or only knew others by their codenames. Actions were carried out by active units called 'commandos', with trained members being supplied by a quartermaster in order to carry out their mission. For more long-term or core  cadre members, isolated cell-like organization was absent or took on a more flexible form. In 1969 the Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella published his "Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla". He described the urban guerrilla as: The importance of small arms training, sabotage, expropriation, and a substantial safehouse/support base among the urban population was stressed in Marighella's guide. This publication was an antecedent to Meinhof's 'The Urban Guerrilla Concept' and has subsequently influenced many guerrilla and insurgent groups around the globe. Although some of the Red Army Faction's supporters and operatives could be described as having an  anarchist or libertarian communist slant, the group's leading members professed a largely Marxist–Leninist ideology. That said, they shied away from overt collaboration with communist states, arguing along the lines of the Chinese side in the Sino-Soviet split that the Soviet Union and its European satellite states had become traitors to the communist cause by, in effect if not in rhetoric, giving the United States a free pass in their exploitation of Third World populations and support of "useful" Third World dictators. Nevertheless, RAF members did receive intermittent support and sanctuary over the border in East Germany during  the 1980s. Anti-imperialism and public support. When they returned to West Germany, they began what they called an "anti-imperialistic struggle", with bank robberies to raise money and bomb attacks against U.S. military facilities, German police stations, and buildings belonging to the Axel Springer press empire. In 1970, a manifesto authored by Meinhof used the name "RAF" and the red star logo with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun for the first time. After an intense manhunt, Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, Meins, and Raspe were eventually caught and arrested in June 1972. Custody and the Stammheim trial. After the arrest  of the protagonists of the first generation of the RAF, they were held in solitary confinement in the newly constructed high security Stammheim Prison north of Stuttgart. When Ensslin devised an "info system" using aliases for each member (names deemed to have allegorical significance from "Moby Dick"), the four prisoners were able to communicate, circulating letters with the help of their defense counsel. To protest against their treatment by authorities, they went on several coordinated hunger strikes; eventually, they were force-fed. Holger Meins died of self-induced starvation on 9 November 1974. After public protests, their conditions were somewhat  improved by the authorities. The so-called second generation of the RAF emerged at that time, consisting of sympathizers independent of the inmates. This became clear when, on 27 February 1975, Peter Lorenz, the CDU candidate for mayor of Berlin, was kidnapped by the 2 June Movement (allied to the RAF) as part of pressure to secure the release of several other detainees. Since none of these were on trial for murder, the state agreed, and those inmates (and later Lorenz himself) were released. On 24 April 1975, the West German embassy in Stockholm was seized by members of the  RAF; two of the hostages were murdered as the German government under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused to give in to their demands. Two of the hostage-takers died from injuries they suffered when the explosives they planted detonated later that night. On 21 May 1975, the Stammheim trial of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and Raspe began, named after the district in Stuttgart where it took place. The Bundestag had earlier changed the Code of Criminal Procedure so that several of the attorneys who were accused of serving as links between the inmates and the RAF's second generation could be excluded . On 9 May 1976, Ulrike Meinhof was found dead in her prison cell, hanging from a rope made from jail towels. An investigation concluded that she had hanged herself, a result hotly contested at the time, triggering a plethora of conspiracy theories. Other theories suggest that she took her life because she was being ostracized by the rest of the group. There is, however, evidence to the contrary of this hypothesis. During the trial, more attacks took place. One of these was on 7 April 1977, when Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback, his driver, and his bodyguard were shot and killed  by two RAF members while waiting at a red traffic light. Buback, who had been a Nazi member during WWII, was considered by RAF as one of the key persons for their trial. Among other things, two years earlier, while being interviewed by "Stern" magazine, he stated that "Persons like Baader don't deserve a fair trial." In February 1976, when interviewed by "Der Spiegel" he stated that "We do not need regulation of our jurisdiction, national security survives thanks to people like me and Herold (chief of BKA), who always find the right way..." Eventually, on 28 April 1977 , the trial's 192nd day, the three remaining defendants were convicted of several murders, more attempted murders, and of forming a terrorist organization; they were sentenced to life imprisonment. Security measures. A new section of Stammheim Prison was built especially for the RAF and was considered one of the most secure prison blocks around the world at the time. The prisoners were transferred there in 1975 (three years after their arrest). The roof and the courtyard were covered with steel mesh. During the night, the precinct was illuminated by fifty-four spotlights and twenty-three neon bulbs. Special military forces , including snipers, guarded the roof. Four hundred police officers along with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution patrolled the building. The mounted police officers rotated on a double shift. One hundred more GSG-9 tactical police officers reinforced the police during the trial while BKA detectives guarded the front of the court area. Finally, helicopters overflew the area. During the trial, accredited media correspondents had to pass a police road block 400 meters from the court. The police noted their data and the number-plate and photographed their cars. After that they had to pass three verification audits , and finally they were undressed and two judicial officials thoroughly searched their bodies. They were allowed to keep only a pencil and a notepad inside the court. Their personal items including their identity papers were withheld by the authorities during the trial. Every journalist could attend the trial only twice (two days). "The Times" questioned the possibility whether a fair trial could be conducted under these circumstances which involved siege-like conditions. "Der Spiegel" wondered whether that atmosphere anticipated "the condemnation of the defendants who were allegedly responsible for the emergency measures." While the trial progressed, the prisoners received visits  from lawyers (and on rare occasions relatives; friends weren't allowed). For those visits, three jailers were always present to observe the conversations between prisoners and visitors. The prisoners were not allowed to meet each other inside the prison, until late-1975 when a regular meeting time was established (30 minutes, twice per day), during which they were guarded. Trial. The judges and their pasts are considered important by supporters of the accused. Judge Weiss (Mahler's trial) had judged Joachim Raese (president of the Third Reich's court) as innocent seven times. When he threatened Meinhof that she would be  put into a glass cage she answered caustically, "So you are threatening me with Eichmann's cage, fascist?" (Adolf Eichmann who was an "Obersturmbannführer" in the SS, was held inside a glass cage during his trial in Israel). Siegfried Buback, the RAF's main trial judge in Stammheim, had been a Nazi Party member. Along with Federal Prosecutor Heinrich Wunder (who served as senior government official in the Ministry of Defense), Buback had ordered the arrest of Rudolf Augstein and other journalists regarding the "Spiegel" affair in 1962. Theodor Prinzing was accused by defense attorney Otto Schily of having been  appointed arbitrarily, displacing other judges. At several points in the Stammheim trial, microphones were turned off while defendants were speaking. They were often expelled from the hall, and other actions were taken. It was later revealed that the conversation they had between themselves as well as with their attorneys were recorded. Finally it was reported by both the defendants' attorneys and some of the prison's doctors, that the physical and psychological state of the prisoners held in solitary confinement and white cells was such that they couldn't attend the long trial days and defend themselves appropriately. By the  time the Stammheim trial began in early-1975, some of the prisoners had already been in solitary confinement for three years. Two former members of the RAF, Karl-Heinz Ruhland and Gerhard Müller, testified under BKA's orders, as revealed later. Their statements were often contradictory, something that was also commented on in the newspapers. Ruhland himself later reported to "Stern" that his deposition was prepared in cooperation with police. Müller was reported to "break" during the third hunger strike in the winter of 1974–1975 which lasted 145 days. The prosecution offered him immunity for the murder of officer Norbert Schmidt  in Hamburg (1971), and blamed Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin, and Raspe instead. He was eventually freed and relocated to the US after getting a new identity and 500,000 Deutschmarks. Lawyers' arrests. The government hastily approved several special laws for use during the Stammheim trial. Lawyers were excluded from trial for the first time since 1945, after being accused of various inappropriate actions, such as helping to form criminal organizations (Section 129, Criminal Law). The authorities invaded and checked the lawyers' offices for possible incriminating material. Minister of Justice Hans-Jochen Vogel stated proudly that no other Western state had such extensive  regulation to exclude defense attorneys from a trial. Klaus Croissant, Hans-Christian Ströbele, Kurt Groenewold, who had been working preparing for the trial for three years, were expelled the second day of the trial. On 23 June 1975, Croissant, Ströbele (who had already been expelled), and Mary Becker were arrested, and in the meantime police invaded several defense attorneys' offices and homes, seizing documents and files. Ströbele and Croissant were remanded and held for four and eight weeks respectively. Croissant had to pay 80,000 Deutschmarks, report weekly to a police station, and had his transport and identity papers seized. The  defense lawyers and prisoners were not the only ones affected by measures adopted for the RAF-trial. On 26 November 1974 an unprecedented mobilization by police and GSG-9 units, to arrest 23 suspected RAF members, included invasion of dozens of homes, left-wing bookstores, and meeting places, and arrests were made. No guerrillas were found. BKA's chief, Horst Herold stated that despite the fact that "large-scale operations usually don't bring practical results, the impression of the crowd is always a considerable advantage." On 16 February 1979 Croissant was arrested (on the accusation of supporting criminal organization – section  129) after France denied his request for political asylum, and was sentenced to a prison term of two and half years to be served in Stammheim prison. Defense strategy. The general approach by defendants and their attorneys was to highlight the political purpose and characteristics of RAF. On 13 and 14 January 1976 the defendants readied their testimony (about 200 pages), in which they analyzed the role of imperialism and its fight against the revolutionary movements in the countries of the "third world". They also expounded the fascistization of West Germany and its role as an imperialistic state (alliance with  the U.S. over Vietnam). Finally they talked about the task of urban guerrillas and undertook the political responsibility for the bombing attacks. Finally their lawyers (following Ulrike Meinhof's proposal) requested that the accused be officially regarded as prisoners of war. On 4 May (five days before Meinhof's death) the four defendants demanded to provide data about the Vietnam War. They claimed that since the military intervention in Vietnam by the U.S. (and indirectly, the FRG), had violated international law, the U.S. military bases in West Germany were justifiable targets of international retaliation. They requested several politicians (like Richard  Nixon and Helmut Schmidt) as well as some former U.S. agents (who were willing to testify) to be called as witnesses. Later when their requests were rejected, U.S. agents Barton Osbourne (ex-CIA, ex-member of the Phoenix Program), G. Peck (NSA), and Gary Thomas gave extensive interviews (organized by defense lawyers) on 23 June 1976 where they explained how FRG support was crucial for U.S. operations in Vietnam. Peck concluded that the RAF "was the response to criminal aggression of the U.S. government in Indochina and the assistance of the German government. The real terrorist was my government." Thomas  presented data about the joint operations of FRG and U.S. secret services in Eastern Europe. He had also observed the Stammheim trial and referred to a CIA instructor teaching them how to make a murder look like a suicide. These statements were confirmed by the CIA case officer Philip Agee. Criminal acts. The RAF has been associated with various serious criminal acts (including bombings, kidnappings and murder) since their founding. The first criminal act attributed to the group after the student Benno Ohnesorg had been killed by a policeman in 1967 was the bombing of the Kaufhaus Schneider department store . On 2 April 1968, affiliates of the group firebombed the store and caused an estimated US$200,000 in property damage. Prominent members of the bombing included Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, two of the founders of the RAF. The bombs detonated at midnight when no one was in the store, thus no one was injured. As the bombs ignited, Gudrun Ensslin was at a nearby payphone, yelling to the German Press Agency, "This is a political act of revenge." On 11 May 1972, the RAF placed three pipe bombs at a United States headquarters in Frankfurt. The bombing resulted in  the death of a US officer and the injury of 13 other people. The stated reason for the bombing was a political statement in protest of US imperialism, specifically, a protest of US mining of North Vietnam harbours. On 19 May 1972, members of the RAF armed six bombs in the Axel Springer Verlag in Hamburg. Only three of the five bombs exploded, but it was enough to injure 36 people. On 24 May 1972, just two weeks after the bombing of the United States headquarters in Frankfurt, the group set off a car bomb at the IDHS (Intelligence Data  Handling Service) Building at Campbell Barracks in Heidelberg. The bombing resulted in the deaths of three soldiers and the injury of five others. On 10 November 1974, the group killed Günter von Drenkmann, the president of Germany's superior court of justice. The killing occurred after a string of events that led to a failed kidnapping by the 2 June Movement, a group that splintered off the RAF after the death of Holger Meins by hunger strike in prison. Starting in February 1975 and continuing through March 1975, the 2 June Movement kidnapped Peter Lorenz, who at the time, was  the Christian Democratic candidate in the race for the mayor of West Berlin. In exchange for the release of Lorenz, the group demanded that several RAF and 2 June Movement members that were imprisoned for reasons other than violence be released from jail. The government obliged and released several of these members for the safe release of Lorenz. On 24 April 1975, six members affiliated with the RAF seized the West German Embassy in Stockholm. The group took hostages and set the building to explode. They demanded the release of several imprisoned members of the RAF. The government refused the  request, which led to the murder of two of the hostages. A few of the bombs that were intended to blow up the embassy prematurely detonated, which resulted in the death of two of the six RAF affiliates. The other four members eventually surrendered to the authorities. In May 1975, several British intelligence reports circulated that stated that the RAF had stolen mustard gas from a joint U.S. and British storage facility. The reports also indicated that the RAF had intended to use the stolen gas in German cities. It eventually turned out that the mustard gas canisters were merely  misplaced; however, the RAF still successfully capitalized on the news by frightening several different agencies. During the early 1980s, German and French newspapers reported that the police had raided an RAF safe house in Paris and had found a makeshift laboratory that contained flasks full of "Clostridium botulinum", which makes botulinum toxin. These reports were later found to be incorrect; no such lab was ever found. German Autumn. On 30 July 1977, Jürgen Ponto, the head of Dresdner Bank, was shot and killed in front of his house in Oberursel in a botched kidnapping. Those involved were Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Christian  Klar, and Susanne Albrecht, the sister of Ponto's goddaughter. Following the convictions, Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former officer of the SS who was then President of the German Employers' Association (and thus one of the most powerful industrialists in West Germany) was abducted in a violent kidnapping. On 5 September 1977, Schleyer's convoy was stopped by the kidnappers reversing a car into the path of Schleyer's vehicle, causing the Mercedes in which he was being driven to crash. Once the convoy was stopped, five masked assailants immediately shot and killed three policemen and the driver and took  Schleyer hostage. One of the group (Sieglinde Hofmann) produced her weapon from a pram she was pushing down the road. A letter was then received by the federal government, demanding the release of eleven detainees, including those in Stammheim. A crisis committee was formed in Bonn, headed by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, which, instead of acceding, resolved to employ delaying tactics to give the police time to discover Schleyer's location. At the same time, a total communication ban was imposed on the prison inmates, who were now allowed visits only from government officials and the prison chaplain. The crisis dragged  on for more than a month, while the "Bundeskriminalamt" carried out its biggest investigation to date. Matters escalated when, on 13 October 1977, Lufthansa Flight 181 from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt was hijacked. A group of four PFLP members took control of the plane (which was named "Landshut"). The leader introduced himself to the passengers as "Captain Mahmud," who was later identified as . When the plane landed in Rome for refueling, he issued the same demands as the Schleyer kidnappers, plus the release of two Palestinians held in Turkey and payment of US$15 million. The Bonn crisis team  again decided not to give in. The plane flew on via Larnaca, then Dubai, and then to Aden, where flight captain Jürgen Schumann, whom the hijackers deemed not cooperative enough, was brought before an improvised "revolutionary tribunal" and murdered on 16 October. His body was dumped on the runway. The aircraft again took off, flown by the co-pilot Jürgen Vietor, this time headed for Mogadishu, Somalia. A high-risk rescue operation was led by Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, then undersecretary in the chancellor's office, who had been secretly flown in from Bonn. At five past midnight (CET) on 18  October, the plane was stormed in a seven-minute assault by GSG 9, an elite unit of the German federal police. All four hijackers were shot; three of them died on the spot. None of the passengers were seriously hurt and Wischnewski was able to phone Schmidt and tell the Bonn crisis team that the operation had been a success. Section::::"Stammheim Death Night". After the conclusion of the Landshut hostage crisis was announced in the late evening of 17 October, all the RAF members incarcerated in Stammheim committed suicide during the following night. Their lawyer, Arndt Müller, had smuggled pistols  into the prison. Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe shot themselves with these weapons while Gudrun Ensslin hanged herself. Irmgard Möller tried to kill herself with a knife, but survived severely injured. The suicides went unnoticed until early next morning. Doctors were rushed in. Baader and Ensslin were already dead when found. Raspe was still alive and moved to the hospital where he died soon after. Möller recovered after being brought to a hospital. The suicide of the imprisoned RAF leadership led to a significant media echo. The coordinated attempt sparked numerous conspiracy theories. It was alleged that the RAF  members did not kill themselves, but instead were killed by the German authorities, the BND, CIA, the United States and NATO. These theories were spread by RAF supporters and sympathizers; some of them even taken up by the mainstream press. Available evidence shows that these suicides were planned and prepared for a long time by the RAF members. On the very same day, Hanns-Martin Schleyer was shot to death by his captors en route to Mulhouse, France. On 19 October, Schleyer's kidnappers announced that he had been "executed" and pinpointed his location. His body was recovered later that  day in the trunk of a green Audi 100 on Rue Charles Péguy. The French newspaper "Libération" received a letter declaring: RAF since the 1980s. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in late December 1991 was a serious blow to Leninist groups, but well into the 1990s attacks were still being committed under the name RAF. Among these were the killing of Ernst Zimmermann, CEO of MTU Aero Engines, a German engineering company; another bombing at the US Air Force's Rhein-Main Air Base (near Frankfurt), which targeted the base commander and killed two bystanders; a car bomb attack  that killed Siemens executive Karl-Heinz Beckurts and his driver; and the shooting of Gerold von Braunmühl, a leading official at Germany's foreign ministry. On 30 November 1989, Deutsche Bank chairman Alfred Herrhausen was killed with a highly complex bomb when his car triggered a photo sensor in Bad Homburg. On 1 April 1991, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, leader of the government "Treuhand" organization responsible for the privatization of the East German state economy, was shot and killed. The assassins of Zimmermann, von Braunmühl, Herrhausen, and Rohwedder were never reliably identified. After German reunification in 1990, it was confirmed that  the RAF had received financial and logistic support from the Stasi, the security and intelligence organization of East Germany, which had given several members (who had chosen to leave the group) shelter and new identities. This was already generally suspected at the time. In 1978 part of the group was exfiltrated through Yugoslavia to communist Poland to avoid a manhunt in Germany. Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Peter Boock, Rolf Wagner, and Sieglinde Hoffmann spent most of the year in SB facilities in Mazury district, where they were also going through series of training programs along with others from Arab countries. In 1992 , the German government assessed that the RAF's main field of engagement now was missions to release imprisoned RAF members. To weaken the organization further the government declared that some RAF inmates would be released if the RAF refrained from violent attacks in the future. Subsequently, the RAF announced their intention to "de-escalate" and refrain from significant activity. The last action taken by the RAF took place in 1993 with a bombing of a newly built prison in Weiterstadt by overcoming the officers on duty and planting explosives. Although no one was seriously injured, this operation caused property damage  amounting to 123 million Deutschmarks (over 50 million euros). The last big action against the RAF took place on 27 June 1993. A "Verfassungsschutz" (internal secret service) agent named Klaus Steinmetz had infiltrated the RAF. As a result, Birgit Hogefeld and Wolfgang Grams were arrested in Bad Kleinen. Grams and GSG 9 officer Michael Newrzella died during the mission. Due to a number of operational mistakes involving the various police services, German Minister of the Interior Rudolf Seiters took responsibility and resigned from his post. Dissolution. On 20 April 1998, an eight-page typewritten letter in German was faxed to  the Reuters news agency, signed "RAF" with the machine-gun red star, declaring the group dissolved: In response to this statement, former BKA President Horst Herold said, "With this statement the Red Army Faction has erected its own tombstone." Legacy. Horst Mahler, a founding RAF member, is now a vocal Neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier. In 2005, he was sentenced to six years in prison for incitement to racial hatred against Jews. He is on record as saying that his beliefs have not changed: "Der Feind ist der Gleiche" (The enemy is the same). In 2007, amidst widespread media controversy , German president Horst Köhler considered pardoning RAF member Christian Klar, who had filed a pardon application several years before. On 7 May 2007, pardon was denied; regular parole was later granted on 24 November 2008. RAF member Brigitte Mohnhaupt was granted release on five-year parole by a German court on 12 February 2007 and Eva Haule was released 17 August 2007. In 2011, the last imprisoned RAF member, Birgit Hogefeld, was released on parole. Police in Europe investigating the whereabouts of Ernst-Volker Staub, Burkhard Garweg and Daniela Klette stated that a search has been made in Spain, France  and Italy after initial reports suggested that they could be hiding in the Netherlands in 2017 after being suspected for masterminding robberies in supermarkets and cash transit vehicles in Wolfsburg, Bremen and Cremlingen between 2011 and 2016. According to scholarly research into Stasi documents, RAF members in East Germany were trained and assisted by personnel from the Stasi Arbeitsgruppe des Ministers S. RAF Commandos. The following is a list of all known RAF Commando Units. Most RAF units were named after deceased RAF members, while others were named after deceased members of international militant left-wing groups such as the  Black Panthers, Irish National Liberation Army, and the Red Brigades. Films. Numerous West German film and TV productions have been made about the RAF. These include Klaus Lemke's telefeature "Brandstifter" ("Arsonists") (1969); Volker Schloendorff and Margarethe von Trotta's co-directed "The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum" (a 1978 adaptation of Heinrich Böll's novel "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum"); "Germany in Autumn" (1978), co-directed by 11 directors, including Alexander Kluge, Volker Schloendorff, Rainer Werner Fassbinder , and Edgar Reitz; Fassbinder's "Die dritte Generation" ("The Third Generation") (1979); Margarethe von Trotta's "Die bleierne Zeit" ("The German  Sisters"/"Marianne and Juliane") (1981); and Reinhard Hauff's "Stammheim" (1986). Post-reunification German films include Christian Petzold's "Die innere Sicherheit" ("The State I Am In") (2000); Kristina Konrad's "Grosse Freiheit, Kleine Freiheit" ("Greater Freedom, Lesser Freedom" (2000); and Christopher Roth's "Baader" (2002). The best known recent film was Uli Edel's 2008 "The Baader Meinhof Complex" (German: "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex"), based on the bestselling book by Stefan Aust. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in both the 81st Academy Awards and 66th Golden Globe Awards. Outside Germany, films include Swiss director Markus Imhoof 's "Die Reise" ("The Journey") (1986). On TV, there was Heinrich Breloer's "Todesspiel" ("Death Game") (1997), a two-part docu-drama, and Volker Schloendorff's "Die Stille nach dem Schuss" ("The Legend of Rita") (2000). There have been several documentaries: "Im Fadenkreuz – Deutschland & die RAF" (1997, several directors); Gerd Conradt's "Starbuck Holger Meins" (2001); Andres Veiel's "Black Box BRD" (2001); Klaus Stern's "Andreas Baader – Der Staatsfeind" ("Enemy of the State") (2003); Ben Lewis's "In Love With Terror", for BBC Four (2003); and "Ulrike Meinhof – Wege in den Terror" ("Ways into Terror") (2006). The 2010  feature documentary "Children of the Revolution" tells Ulrike Meinhof's story from the perspective of her daughter, journalist and historian Bettina Röhl, while Andres Veiel's 2011 feature film "If Not Us, Who?" provides a context for the RAF's origins through the perspective of Gudrun Ensslin's partner Bernward Vesper. In 2015, Jean-Gabriel Périot released his feature-length, found-footage documentary "A German Youth" on the Red Army Faction. The 2018 remake of "Suspiria" features a secondary character attempting to run away to join the Red Army Faction, serving as a catalyst for the later events of the  film.