24 Nov 2008

Red Army Faction boss to be freed

A German court has approved the release from jail of a leader of the RAF, a radical leftist group involved in high-profile killings in the 1970s and 1980s.

Red Army Faction leader Christian Klar, aged 56, is serving five life terms but will have served the minimum required 26 years by January.

The court in Stuttgart said there were no grounds to keep him in custody.

The group, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, targeted bankers, businessmen, judges and US servicemen.

More than 30 people were killed by the gang, before it disbanded 10 years ago.

"A major consideration was the question of whether it could be feared that Christian Klar would commit significant criminal acts again," but the judges decided there was no evidence he would, the court said in a statement.

BBC NEWS

Also see baader-meinhof.com; "It wasn't just about killing Americans, and killing pigs, at least not at first. It was about attacking the illegitimate state that these pawns served. It was about scraping the bucolic soil and exposing the fascist, Nazi-tainted bedrock that the modern West German state was propped upon. It was about war on the forces of reaction. It was about Revolution."