30-year-old alleged Red Army Faction member apprehended

Suspected member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) Daniela Klette has been caught by German police after hiding for more than 30 years.

The 65-year-old person was found on Monday evening in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg, which is known for being left-wing.

Ms Klette is known for being in the far-left armed group that caused fear in Germany for many years.

She is charged with trying to kill someone and committing several serious robberies.

Newspaper headlines about “RAF Rentner” or “Red Army Faction pensioners” make the robberies from 1999 to 2016 seem like a funny TV show about an old grandma running away. The RAF, also called the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was violent before it was disbanded.

Between 1971 and 1993, 34 people died. The group went after important people in politics and business, and they’ve attacked an attorney general and the chairman of Deutsche Bank.

More than 200 people got hurt.

Officials say that Ms Klette was part of the RAF’s third generation, which was active in the 1980s and 1990s.

It’s said that it killed the head of Deutsche Bank with a bomb on the side of the road, and also shot and killed a politician from the centre-left party in his home. He was given the job of selling off businesses in the East Germany that used to be communist.

In 1991, the group attacked the US embassy in the city of Bonn with guns. No one got hurt, but they found Ms Klette’s DNA at the site later.

Two years later, the group attacked and damaged a new prison that was recently built.

The Red Army Faction started from the radical student movement in the 1960s. It wanted to weaken the economy of West Germany, and the group had connections to fighters in the Middle East.

Even now, some people on the far left still admire the RAF. The gang’s logos appear on clothes sometimes, which causes upset arguments in Germany about whether people think left-wing violence is exciting rather than serious.


The RAF ended in 1998 and some members, like Daniela Klette, went into hiding. Since then, she and two other ex-RAF members are said to have made money by robbing supermarkets and cash transport vehicles. It is believed that they made millions of euros altogether.

The police put up posters with old, blurry photos of three young people, with the message that they could live near you. They’re trying to find these people.

New pictures from the police show that Ms Klette’s two partners are older men with grey hair. But it seems like she managed to not be seen or have her picture taken. The police only have a drawing of what she might look like at 65 years old.

On 14 February, a lawyer from the government asked people to share information on TV about a crime. Many people called in with clues.

For a long time, no one could find Daniela Klette, and she was able to stay hidden.