For thirty years she has eluded the German police.
Before that, she was involved in several bombings and over thirty murders of high-profile politicians.
Now Daniela Klette, a member of the infamous Baader-Meinhof League, has been arrested in Berlin, according to prosecutors in the state of Lower Saxony.
The terrorist group was disbanded – but Daniela Klette continued on the path of crime.
On Monday evening, German authorities put an end to her thirty-year escape from justice, when the 66-year-old was arrested in an apartment in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg.
Klette used according Der Spiegel an Italian passport, but could be identified using fingerprints. In addition to the wanted person, ammunition and two magazines were also found in the apartment, German media write.
Terror in West Germany
The Baader Meinhof League, or actually the Red Army Faction (RAF), terrorized West Germany in the 1970s and 80s, with bombings, kidnappings and over 30 murders of high-profile politicians and business leaders. Among the victims were the then head of Deutsche Bank Alfred Herrhausen, the Attorney General Siegfried Buback and the employers’ base Hanns Martin Schleyer.
However, the left-wing radical terror group’s tentacles extended far abroad. One of the more spectacular attacks was the bombing of the West German embassy at Gärdet in Stockholm in 1975, when two embassy employees and two members of the RAF were killed.
Prominent figures Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader were both found hanged outside Stammheim prison in 1976 and 1977 respectively. The deaths have been officially labeled as suicides, but have given rise to a number of alternative theories. Subsequent generations of RAF members then continued the operation until the organization was disbanded in 1998.
Continued violent crime
Daniela Klette then went underground together with companions Ernst-Volker Staub und Burkhard Garweg. The trio, nicknamed the “RAF pensioners” in German media, are suspected of attempted murder and a long string of armed robberies against grocery stores and transports of valuables, at least some of them as late as 2016.
In order to finance his retired life, Klette, in addition to serious violent crime, must have given private lessons in mathematics, writes Der Tagesspiegel. The newspaper has spoken to a neighbor of “Claudia”, as she called herself, who says he was given biscuits as a Christmas present by the escaped criminal.
The interior minister of the state of Lower Saxony, Daniela Behrens, calls the arrest “a milestone in German criminal history”.