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February 13, 2007
Pardon?
Yesterday, a German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, a well known member of the former German terrorist group RAF (Red Army fraction) is to released from prison at the end of March after serving 24 years of her life long sentence. She will be out on a five year parole. Her release has stirred up quite a discussion in the country if and under what conditions people like her should be released from prison at all.
The RAF formed in the late 1960's at the end of the student protests in Germany. It was also known in the beginning as the Baader-Meinhof gang after her founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. Its purpose was obviously to fight a war against the German state which its members thought oppressively capitalistic. The RAF is thought to be
responsible for killing 34 people between 1972 and 1991. It officially disbanded in 1998 admitting they couldn't win the war they had started.
Brigitte Mohnhaupt was studying journalism when she joined the RAF in 1971 supplying them with weapons. She was arrested in 1972 and sentenced to five years. She spent the last months of her sentence in the same prison as Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, another member of the first RAF generation. After her release in 1977 she became one of the key figures of the second RAF generation.
1977 went done as a bloody year in German history. Mohnhaupt was involved in the murders of leading figures in German industry and politics including industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the head of the Dresdner Bank ¨rgen Ponto and the federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback. German society was stunned by the sheer brutality of these crimes. For example, the car of Hanns-Martin Schleyer was stopped, his driver and two companions gunned down and Schleyer was abducted and held prisoner for several weeks. Mohnhaupt and her accomplices demanded the release of the other imprisoned RAF members but the German government refused to be blackmailed. So, in the end Hanns-Martin Schleyer was shot by the RAF terrorist. They never showed the least bit of compassion for their victims.
In October 1977 Palastinian terrorist abducted the German Lufthansa plane 'Landshut' on its way from Mallorca to Frankfurt. They too demanded the released of the imprisoned RAF members. At their first stop in Aden they shot the captain and then flew on to Mogadishu where they were eventually overwhelmed by special German military orces. During the next night the imprisoned RAF terrorist Jan-Carl Raspe, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin committed suicide in their cells.
Brigitte Mohnhaupt was eventually caught in 1982. But the terror still went on with the assinations of the head of the
Deutsche Bank Alfred Herrhausen in 1989 and the head of the Treuhand trust (an organisation which, from 1990-1994, took over the state owned firms of former East Germany after reunification and sought to bring them into the private sector) Detlev Karsten Rohwedder in 1991 and the bombing of a newly built prison complex in 1993. I have seen the remnants of Herrhausen's car and I've heard the 'bang' when the car bomb went off right beside the prison wall as a lived only about 20 km away at that time and both was a real shock to me.
As mentioned before the RAF officially disbanded in 1998 and it is said that Brigitte Mohnhaupt supported this decision whole heartedly. After having been sentenced to five lifetimes of imprisonment she will have served the required minimum of 24 years in March this year. As she is no longer believed to be a threat to society and has said herself that guerilla war is no longer an option for her she will be released on parole next month.
I must admit that it is not easy to come to terms with that. I know that our juidicial system is not built on revenge but on resocialisation, i.e. giving people a second chance to prove themselves useful for society. It is certainly correct that from a legal point of view Brigitte Mohnhaupt is entitled to her release. But still - I could believe a murderer regretting his deed if it was committed in the heat of a moment. But I have severe doubts in this case where the murders were carefully planned and carried out coldblooded and without mercy. And I wonder how the surviving family members of more than 30 victims of those 20 years can live with this.
It was said in the media that Brigitte Mohnhaupt wanted to do something more for the victims' families than just telling them that she was sorry for what she had done. It remains to be seen if she really will. The tragedy is that whatever she will do it will never make undone what she has done in the past.
Posted by Mausi at February 13, 2007 07:09 PM
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