Article based on news reports (ncy)August 16, 2007
German left-wing terrorist group the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, discussed kidnapping former Chancellor Willy Brandt, newly released documents from German federal prosecutors show.
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The RAF terrorized Germany for many yearsImage: AP Graphics/DW
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Information that the left-wing terrorists considered kidnapping Willy Brandt stemmed from the 1985 sentence handed down to RAF members Christian Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt.
"Such an undertaking was supposed to be used to free the Stammheim prisoners," wrote the Stuttgart judges who heard the pair's case, referring to the maximum-security jail where several RAF terrorists, including the group's leaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, were being held.
The prosecutors determined that, at a meeting in the Dutch city of Utrecht on April 16, 1977, Mohnhaupt and four other RAF members discussed the possibility of abducting Brandt. At the time, Brandt, then head of Germany's Social Democratic Party and the Socialist International, was in Amsterdam. He had left office as chancellor in 1974. Brandt died in 1992Image: AP In June 1977, the RAF also considered carrying out an attack at a meeting of foreign ministers in Luxembourg, the investigators wrote.
1970s terror
The RAF killed German Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback, bank manager Jürgen Ponto and employers' association chief Hanns Martin Schleyer the same year.
Federal prosecutors released the written sentences in the assassination of Buback Wednesday. Previously, the documents had not been accessible in full to the public, because a new investigation into the murder was underway. The new details were published in Thursday's edition of Bild newspaper.
Mohnhaupt was released in March after spending 24 years in prison. Klar's application for clemency was rejected by President Horst Köhler in May. Both were convicted for their roles in numerous murders. Klar is serving a life sentence.
