NINETEEN SEVENTY SEVEN IS OFTEN described as the moment of truth in the RAF’s battle against the West German state—for better or for worse. In fact, most histories of the RAF actually stop after this point, or mention all that came afterwards as a barely interesting epilogue.
Such a perspective is mistaken, and amounts to closing the book before the story is even half done. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that 1977 was a year like no other, representing an attempt to push things to a qualitatively higher level. As events reached their climax in a bloody series of events known as “The German Autumn,” every sector of society was shaken to the core.
As debate over the RAF’s struggle played itself out in the pages of Info-BUG, state psychological operations continued unabated in the corporate press. Newspapers repeated police allegations that RAF supporters had murdered a banker, his wife and three children, and also that the guerilla was planning to kidnap the Canadian ambassador.1 In January, police claimed they found and defused a bomb at the Weisbaden train station, presumably another false flag attack.2
Then, on February 9, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who had been captured following the May Offensive, was released from prison: her four-and-a-half-year sentence for illegal possession of firearms1 and membership in a criminal association had come to an end. She immediately went underground, rejoining the guerilla.
On March 29, prisoners from the RAF and the 2nd of June Movement began their fourth hunger strike, demanding POW status, association in groups of no less than fifteen, an end to isolation, an international investigation into the deaths of Holger Meins, Siegfried Hausner, and Ulrike Meinhof, and an end to false flag actions and communiqués. Initially, thirty-five prisoners participated, but soon the number refusing food surpassed one hundred, and some even began refusing liquids.
The irony was that the hunger strike for POW status, which the RZ had feared would limit itself to an elite group, managed to rally more prisoners than any previous hunger strike. This was grim testimony to the number of combatants who had been captured, along with the number of supporters who were now serving time under §129.
At the same time, the guerilla was not going to let the prisoners wage this battle on their own.
On April 7, as Attorney General Buback was waiting at a traffic light in Karlsruhe, two individuals pulled up on a motorcycle alongside his Mercedes. One of them then pulled out a submachine gun and fired, riddling the Attorney General’s car with bullets.
Siegfried Buback, the man who had come to personify the judicial attacks against the guerilla, had been assassinated.
The RAF immediately issued a communiqué claiming responsibility in the name of the “Ulrike Meinhof Commando” explaining Buback’s responsibility for the deaths of Meinhof, Hausner, and Meins.
Along with the Attorney General, his chauffeur Wolfgang Göbel and bodyguard Georg Wurster were also killed. Even some of the prisoners’ own lawyers were shocked, Otto Schily declaring on their behalf that they viewed “this senseless and brutal murder with the utmost horror and revulsion.”2
Within a day, police announced that Günter Sonnenberg, Christian Klar, and Knut Folkerts (all of whom were formerly active in the prisoner support scene) were being sought in connection to the attack, and a bounty of 200,000 marks3 was being offered for information leading to their capture.4
This assassination occurred not only in the context of Buback’s continuing attacks against the lawyers, but also two weeks before the end of the Stammheim show trial in which Baader, Ensslin and Raspe were found guilty of various offenses relating to the May Offensive of 1972.
As has been noted elsewhere:
This attack marked a shift to a strategy that would be marked by an overwhelming focus on assassinations of key members of the state apparatus and the business elite. Although this might not have been recognized at the time, it was a shift to an entirely new phase in the RAF’s practice.5
Or, as Knut Folkerts later testified, the assassination “showed that we knew who they were, that we could attack them, and that there was nothing they could do to stop us.”6
The hunger strike continued, the prisoners consolidating their support. Soon relatives of the prisoners began a solidarity hunger strike, and on April 17, Peter’s Church in Frankfurt was occupied and turned into a hunger strike information center. As the number of prisoners refusing food reached one hundred and twenty, more outside supporters began a second solidarity hunger strike in a Bielefeld Church. On April 27, relatives of political prisoners held a demonstration at the United Nations headquarters in Switzerland demanding the application of the Geneva Convention. The next day, Amnesty International added its voice to that of eighty clergymen and two hundred and forty-five lawyers, all urging the government to abandon its hard line.
Finally, on April 30, it was announced that the prisoners would be granted limited association. Years of struggle seemed to have finally paid off. In response to this victory the prisoners agreed to call off their hunger strike.
The seventh floor of Stammheim prison—where Baader, Raspe, and Ensslin were held along with Irmgard Möller, who had been transferred there in January of that year—was soon being renovated to allow up to sixteen prisoners to be housed together.
At the same time, the hunt for the guerillas in the field continued.
On May 3, Günter Sonnenberg and Verena Becker were captured in the German-Swiss border town of Singen. (In the two years since she had been freed in exchange for Lorenz, Becker had moved from 2JM to the RAF.) A woman had tipped off the police after spotting the two as they sat in a café: she recognized Sonnenberg from the wanted posters that had gone up throughout Western Europe following the Buback assassination.
When the police arrived on the scene, the guerillas tried to play it cool, innocently pretending to have left their ID papers in their car. While being escorted from the café—presumably to retrieve these phantom id papers—they drew their weapons and shot the two cops, commandeered a car, and took off.1 Pursued by squad cars alerted to the incident, they took a wrong turn and ended up in a field. This forced them to ditch their vehicle and try to escape on foot.
At this point, one of the guerillas dropped a submachine gun—as it would turn out, the same weapon that had been used to kill Buback. A cop picked the weapon up and fired: Becker was hit in her leg, while Sonnenberg was critically injured, struck by bullets in his torso and head. His wounds were such that it took several hours before he could be positively identified, and days later it was still unclear if he would survive.2
As a result of his injuries, Sonnenberg suffered brain damage, and is prone to epileptic seizures to this day. Years later, he would recall his condition following capture:
I didn’t know anything except my name. I could neither read nor write, nor formulate things in any form. Words and concepts were utterly foreign to me. Even things having to do with daily life—like plate and spoon, bed and sink, book and radio—I no longer knew these words and concepts.3
Two days later, on May 5, Uwe Folkerts (Knut’s brother) and Johannes Thimme were both arrested in Holland, the police claiming that they had been involved in the Buback assassination, as well as with alleged plans to seize hostages to exchange for the prisoners.4
Throughout the summer, different RAF prisoners would go back on hunger strike for various periods of time, demanding the association they had been promised.
At the same time, the state was not letting up on its attacks against the lawyers. In one particularly incredible move, attorneys Armin Newerla and Arndt Müller were charged with attempted murder on the grounds that they did not discourage their clients Verena Becker and Sabine Schmitz5 from hunger striking.6 On July 8, Klaus Croissant fled the country: on June 26 he had been subjected to a partial Berufsverbot, and there were signs he might be arrested at any time. Pieter Bakker Schut, Ronald Augustin’s Dutch attorney, suggested he go to the Netherlands, but Croissant chose Paris, where he held a press conference four days later, requesting political asylum.7 The lawyer pointed to the years of harassment he had endured, and noted that with the ongoing confrontation things were getting worse: he was facing a third arrest and, as he was now subjected to the Berufsverbot, could neither defend himself nor continue to defend his clients except from outside the country. His home, office, and telephone had all been bugged, and surrounding buildings were used for physical surveillance, which included state agents openly photographing everyone who entered his office. On December 15, 1976, one of his secretaries had been offered several thousand DM by the Verfassungsschutz in exchange for copies of legal notes and a list of his clients. Finally, he pointed to the fact that he was followed to and from his office by uniformed police, which he described as a form of psychological terrorism.8
As we shall see, while Croissant’s plea would raise international awareness about what was happening in the Federal Republic, it would not be sufficient to keep him safe. Nevertheless, for the time being he was allowed to remain in Paris, as the French authorities tried to decide how to handle the affair.
The next attack occurred on July 30 in the wealthy Frankfurt suburb of Oberursel. Three RAF members, including a young woman named Susanne Albrecht, came with red roses to the door of a thirty-room villa belonging to Jürgen Ponto.1 One of the most important businessmen in West Germany, Ponto had direct ties to many Third World governments and had served as an advisor to South Africa’s infamous apartheid regime. He was also godfather to Albrecht’s sister and a close friend of her parents.
The guerillas attempted to abduct the businessman, but when he resisted they opened fire, shooting him five times. He died on his kitchen floor.
As Albrecht had been recognized by Ponto’s wife, she signed her name to the guerilla’s communiqué for this action. She was sought for this attack along with Angelika Speitel, Silke Maier-Witt, and Siegrid Sternebeck. With the exception of Speitel, who had been underground for some years now, the women had all been active together since 1974, meeting through the Hamburg squats, Red Aid, and the Committees Against Torture. They had all known members of the Holger Meins Commando who had carried out the ill-fated Stockholm action in 1975. All four went underground immediately.
(A political storm ensued when it was learned that Ponto had never been warned that police knew Albrecht was close to the RAF. This led the FDP Federal Minister of the Interior Werner Maihofer to famously state that, “There is no capitalist who does not have a terrorist in his own intimate circle of friends or relations.”)2
On August 8, Helmut Pohl, Wolfgang Beer, and Werner Hoppe, who had been moved to be with the others in Stammheim just a month earlier, were transferred back to Hamburg. The precise excuse used was a “fight” with guards—essentially a set up whereby the guards provoked an incident and used it as an excuse to attack and beat all of the prisoners on the floor.3 It appeared that Buback’s replacement, Kurt Rebmann, had moved to reverse his previous agreement for association.
In reaction to these shenanigans and to the attack on Ponto, all RAF prisoners went on hunger strike, some escalating to a thirst strike almost immediately.
It was only days before the force-feeding began.
Defense attorneys Newerla and Müller began organizing public support for the striking prisoners, and became subject to even heavier levels of harassment and outright repression. On August 15, the lawyers’ offices were bombed, almost certainly with the collusion of the police who had the premises under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. Müller and assistant Volker Speitel were there at the time, but were not injured.4 Newerla was subsequently arrested when multiple copies of the left-wing magazine MOB which supported the prisoners were found in his car: he was charged with “supporting a terrorist organization” under §129a.5
The new Attorney General staked out the “hard-line” position for which he would be remembered. “I know that the population is not at all interested if these people go on hunger and thirst strikes,” Rebmann told the press. “The population wants these people to be hit hard, just as hard as they have earned with their brutal deed.”
He was asked about the possibility of prisoners dying. “That is always a bad thing,” he answered, “but it would be the consequence which has been made clear to them and their lawyers and which is clear to them. The conditions of imprisonment don’t justify such a strike; they are doing very well considering the circumstances.”6
On August 25, the RAF responded by targeting Rebmann’s offices. Peter-Jürgen Boock (the husband of Waltraud Boock) set up an improvised rocket launcher aimed at the Attorney General’s headquarters, but the timing device was not set properly, and it failed to fire. Boock later broke with the RAF and claimed that he had purposefully sabotaged this attack, as his conscience would not allow him to risk the lives of the secretaries and office workers in the building.7 (The editors of this volume assume this statement to be false, along with almost everything else Boock has said.)
Whatever the truth of the matter, the RAF attempted to put this mishap in the best possible light, issuing a communiqué a week later in which they pretended that the entire exercise had merely been intended as a warning. The guerilla went on to promise that it was more than willing to act should it prove necessary to save the prisoners:
Should Andreas, Gudrun, and Jan be killed, the apologists for the hard line will find that they are not the only ones with weapons at their disposal. They will find that we are many, and that we have enough love—as well as enough hate and imagination—to use both our weapons and their weapons against them, and that their pain will equal ours.1
Following Meinhof’s murder, and in the context of the recent hunger strikes and Rebmann’s bloodthirsty statements, the guerilla was clearly concerned that the state might move to kill Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe. This fear was shared by the prisoners themselves, who knew that they might suffer reprisals for the guerilla’s actions.
Indeed, anticipating such reprisals, and following the breakdown of negotiations between Amnesty International and the Federal Government, the prisoners called off their hunger and thirst strike on September 2. In a short statement, Jan-Carl Raspe explained that the attacks on Ponto and Rebmann had created an environment in which the prisoners had become hostages and the state was ready and willing to kill them to set an example.2
The failed Ponto kidnapping had been intended to be the first of a two-pronged action to put pressure on the West German bourgeoisie to force the state to free the prisoners. Despite their failure to take Ponto alive, it was decided to follow through on the second part of this plan.
On September 5, the RAF’s “Siegfried Hausner Commando” kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer. His car and police escort were forced to a stop by a baby stroller that was left out in the middle of the road, at which point they were ambushed by guerillas who killed his chauffeur, Heinz Marcisz, and three police officers—Reinhold Brändle, Helmut Ulmer and Roland Pieler—before making their getaway.
A note received soon after warned that, “The federal government must take steps to assure that all aspects of the manhunt cease—or we will immediately shoot Schleyer without even engaging in negotiations for his freedom.”
Schleyer was the most powerful businessman in West Germany at the time. Like Ponto, he was a frequent figure on television representing the ruling class point of view. He was the president of both the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie (Federal Association of German Industrialists) and the Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände (Federal Association of German Employers), and had a reputation as an aggressive opponent of any workers’ demands.3 As a veteran of Hitler’s SS, he was a perfect symbol of the integration of former Nazis into the postwar power structure.4
Hanns Martin Schleyer in captivity. The RAF had considered having him hold a sign with his SS number and the caption “A Prisoner of His Own History,” but quickly rejected this idea. Not only did the guerillas have no wish to inflict needless humiliation, but they were also aware that their captive was already unpopular in West Germany and feared he would have less exchange value if he was debased further.
As the guerilla would later explain:
We hoped to confront the SPD with the decision of whether to exchange these two individuals who embody the global power of FRG capital in a way that few others do.
Ponto for his international financial policy (revealing how all the German banks, especially his own Dresdner Bank, work to support reactionary regimes in developing countries and also the role of FRG financial policy as a tool to control European integration) and Schleyer for the national economic policy (the big trusts, corporatism, the FRG as an international model of social peace).
They embodied the power within the state which the SPD must respect if it wishes to stay in power.1
The attempted Ponto kidnapping may have ended in failure, yet it was felt that the plan could not be called off, that lives were at stake: “the prisoners had reached a point where we could no longer put off an action to liberate them. The prisoners were on a thirst strike and Gudrun was dying.”2
Within a day of Schleyer’s kidnapping, the commando demanded the release of eleven prisoners—including Ensslin, Raspe, and Baader—and safe passage to a country of their choosing. This demand was reiterated on September 6, as the guerilla suspected state security of not relaying their first communiqué to the proper authorities.
Pastor Martin Niemöller and the Swiss human rights advocate Denis Payot (whom the RAF mistakenly thought held a position in the United Nations) were to accompany the prisoners to their final destination. The commando further demanded that the prisoners be given 100,000 DM each ($44,000), and that their entire communiqué be read on Tagesschau, a nightly current affairs television program.
In discussions with state representatives, the prisoners promised that they would not return to the FRG or participate in future armed actions if exiled. Nevertheless, the government issued a statement indicating that it would not release them under any circumstances.
Government officials declared a “supra-legal state of emergency,” and Schmidt convened the Crisis Management Team, which had first been established in 1975 during the Lorenz action and then during the RAF’s Stockholm siege. Over the next weeks, this team served to concentrate all decision-making powers in the hands of the executive:
Arguing that each party was represented on the committee, the need to consult parliament in matters of national importance was effectively curtailed. For the length of the “German Autumn” the crisis management team was the ruling body, responsible for all negotiations with the terrorists and the enactment of security measures.3
One of the first measures taken was a “voluntary” news ban, immediately followed by a total Kontaktsperre (Contact Ban) against all political prisoners. As its name implies, the Contact Ban deprived the prisoners of any contact with each other, as well as with the outside world. All visits, including those with lawyers and family members, were forbidden. The prisoners were also denied any access to mail, newspapers, magazines, television, or radio. In short, they were placed in 100% individual isolation,4 in what has been described as a case of “counter-kidnapping” by the state.5
While the Contact Ban was initially not sanctioned by law, parliament obliged by rushing through the appropriate legislation in record time (just three days) and with only four votes against.6 The justification offered was a claim that the prisoners had directed the kidnapping from within their cells with the help of the lawyers. As evidence, police claimed to have found a hand drawn map used in the kidnapping in Armin Newerla’s car on September 5.7
On September 9, Agence France Presse’s Bonn office received an ultimatum from the Siegfried Hausner Commando, setting a 1:00 PM deadline for the release of the prisoners. The state countered with a proposal that Denis Payot act as a go-between.
Secret negotiations began the same day, the RAF repeatedly—and less and less convincingly—warning of dire consequences if the prisoners were not immediately released, while the state very successfully stalled for time. The SPD’s Minister in Charge of Special Affairs, Hans Jürgen Wischnewski, who had a good reputation from having acted as a gobetween with various Third World liberation movements,1 began to travel to various foreign capitals looking for a “progressive regime” which might take the prisoners. Or so the RAF was meant to believe: according to political scientist (and former counterinsurgency expert) Richard Clutterbuck, Wischnewski’s trips were a careful ploy, picked up by the media as a sign that the government was willing to give in despite Schmidt’s official “no-deals” policy. Clutterbuck credits the media reports to this effect for the fact that the RAF did not kill Schleyer when their first ultimatums expired.2
The Minister in Charge of Special Affairs traveled first to Algeria and Libya, then South Yemen and Iraq, and finally to Vietnam. Though their refusal was not immediately made public, none of these countries would accept the prisoners—a decision that in the case of the PDRY was informed by the way the FRG had reneged on its promises following the Lorenz prisoner exchange.3
Meanwhile, the hunt for the guerilla and their captive continued.
On September 19, RAF members Knut Folkerts and Brigitte Mohnhaupt narrowly escaped from Dutch police after the manager of a car rental agency in Utrecht became suspicious of their identification papers. They got away and managed to rent a car at another agency, but when they returned it four days later, the police were lying in wait. By the time the bullets had stopped flying, Folkerts was in custody, two cops were wounded and a third, officer Arie Kranenburg, was dead. Mohnaupt managed to get away.4
The search for Schleyer was extended to Holland, but to no avail.
On September 30, defense attorney Ardnt Müller was arrested. Accused of having worked with Newerla and defense attorney Klaus Croissant to recruit for the RAF, he was imprisoned under Contact Ban conditions. The arrest was buttressed by the claim that on September 2, Müller had used Newerla’s car, in which the aforementioned map had been found.
On October 7, the thirty-second day of the kidnapping, newspapers in France and Germany received a letter from Schleyer, accompanied by a photo, decrying the “indecisiveness” of the authorities.
On October 13, with negotiations deadlocked, a new development moved the already intense confrontation to an entirely different level, as a Palestinian group intervened in solidarity with the RAF. The “Struggle Against World Imperialism Organization”—also known as the Martyr Halimeh Commando—hijacked a Lufthansa airliner traveling from Majorca, Spain to Frankfurt, West Germany. This was actually a PFLP (EO) commando, led by Zohair Youssef Akache.5
Eighty-five passengers and five crew members were taken hostage.
At 4:00 PM, the airliner landed in Rome to refuel and to issue the commando’s demands. These were the release of the eleven RAF prisoners, and also two Palestinians being held in Turkey, Mahdi Muhammed and Hussein Muhammed al Rashid, who were serving life sentences for an attempted hijacking at Istanbul airport in 1976, in which four people had been killed.
Led by Waddi Haddad, the PFLP (EO) had split from the more well known PFLP in the early seventies. It was the PFLP (EO) that had worked with the RZ’s international wing during the Entebbe hijacking a year earlier, and during the attack on the OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in 1975.6 Both of these actions had been viewed negatively by the RAF prisoners, and yet they had never criticized them publicly.
It remains unclear how the Palestinian guerillas came to be involved in the RAF’s 1977 campaign. Haddad was killed by the Mossad soon afterwards, and all accounts seem to come solely from the German side; in evaluating them, it should be kept in mind that this entire operation was later seen as a serious error by the RAF and its supporters.
Some say that faced with the increasingly unpromising situation in the FRG, with the government obviously stalling for time while negotiating in bad faith, Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Peter-Jürgen Boock had flown to Baghdad to enlist Haddad’s aid; according to some versions, they agreed to pay $15 million for it.1 According to other reports, it was Haddad who contacted the RAF, using the RZ international wing’s Johannes Weinrich as a go-between.2 According to Stefan Wisniewski, one of those involved in the Schleyer kidnapping,
The Palestinians had their own interest in such an action. Of course, getting the prisoners out, there was also the issue of two Palestinian prisoners who were sitting in a Turkish prison, but there was also something else altogether. They said to themselves, “When a country like the Federal Republic, the most important country in the European Community, is involved in a confrontation that the entire world is watching, then we have an opportunity to introduce our concerns.”3
Regardless of these details, it was a plan agreed to by the RAF in the field, several of whose members had spent time in a PFLP (EO) training camp in South Yemen.4 The 1976-1977 wave of combatants had moved to the international terrain, in a way the RAF had never done before.5
Not only that, but they had sanctioned an action in which civilians were being used as hostages—another unprecedented step which the guerilla would eventually see an error.6 Suddenly, it was not just one man, a former Nazi and current representative of the West German ruling class, who was being held hostage, but a plane full of ordinary people. A quiet horror descended, not only on many supporters of the guerilla, but on some RAF prisoners, too. As Karl-Heinz Dellwo recalls:
This hostage-taking completely threw aside what Gudrun had called “the moral ticket.” Holger Meins’ last letter closed with the appeal “Serve the People,” and here the people were being attacked.7
Furthermore, the SAWIO was a Palestinian commando acting primarily to demand the release of First World revolutionaries, providing more evidence that the events of 77 were no longer even orbiting the realities of the West German left, and that the organic relationship the RAF founders had enjoyed with the broader movement in 72 was now far in the past. Andreas Baader is reported to have said as much to government representatives at Stammheim, stating that the prisoners did not condone operations like the skyjacking which target innocent civilians, but that the “brutality” of the latest wave of combatants had been made inevitable by the government’s attacks.8
It is horrible to note that the Palestinians were risking their lives—and as we shall see, most of them would pay that price—for West German prisoners who disapproved of the whole operation in the first place. This was a sign that the guerillas in the field had miscalculated in more ways than one.
Nevertheless, none of the RAF prisoners publicly disavowed this action, any misgivings tempered with the hope that this might swing the balance in their favor. Indeed, previous opinion polls had shown 60% opposed and 22% in favor of yielding to the RAF’s demands; once the airliner was seized, opinion became evenly split on the matter.9
The plane flew to Cyprus and from there to the Gulf, where it landed first in Bahrain and then, at 6:00 AM on October 14, in Dubai.
Within a few hours, Denis Payot announced receipt of a communiqué setting a deadline of 8:00 AM October 16 for all the demands to be met, “if a bloodbath was to be avoided.”10 The communiqué, signed by both the SAWIO and the Siegfried Hausner Commando, was accompanied by a videotape of Schleyer.
At 5:47 PM, the West German government released a statement specifying that they intended to do everything possible to find “a reasonable and humanitarian solution,” so as to save the lives of the hostages. That evening Wischnewski left Bonn for Dubai: he was no longer traveling to arrange sanctuary for the prisoners, or even to pretend to do so, but rather to negotiate the terms of an intervention.
On October 15, Denis Payot announced that he had an “extremely important and urgent” message for the Siegfried Hausner Commando from the federal government in Bonn. Wischnewski, on site in Dubai, announced that there would be no military intervention. That evening, West German television broke its self-imposed silence (which had been requested by the state) for the first time since the kidnapping, showing a thirty second clip from the Schleyer video received the day before.
As another day drew to an end, the West German government publicly announced that Somalia, South Yemen, and Vietnam had all refused to accept the RAF prisoners and the two Palestinians held in Turkey.
At 8:00 AM on October 16, the forty-first day since the kidnapping of Schleyer, the deadline established in the October 14 ultimatum passed. In Geneva, Payot once again announced that he had received an “extremely important and urgent” message from Bonn. At 10:43 AM, the Turkish Minister of Finance and Defense announced that Turkey was prepared to release the two Palestinians should the West German government request it.
At 11:21 AM, the airliner left Dubai.
At noon, the second ultimatum passed.
At 2:38 PM, government spokesman Klaus Bölling declared that a “realistic” solution was still being sought. Seven hours later, a plane landed in Saudi Arabian city of Jiddah, carrying Wischnewski and the GSG-9, the special operations unit that had been established just four years earlier following the Black September attack at the Munich Olympics.
That night, the plane carrying the hijackers and their hostages was forced to make an emergency landing in South Yemen to refuel. The PDRY’s military had blocked off the airstrip with tanks, not wanting anything to do with the skyjacking, but the plane set down on a sand track beside the runway itself.1
Finally refueled the next morning, the plane took off, landing in Mogadishu, Somalia at 3:20 AM German time on October 17. An hour later the dead body of Flight Captain Jürgen Schumann, who had been sending out coded messages about the situation on board, was pushed out the door.2
The hijackers announced they were extending their deadline to 2:00 PM, German time.
At 1:30 PM Bölling held a press conference, during which he insisted that the goal of the authorities, “has been and remains saving the lives of the hostages.”3
At 2:00 PM, yet another deadline passed. Minutes earlier, the plane carrying Wischnewski and the GSG-9 had landed in Mogadishu.
At the same time, in the Federal Republic, Schleyer’s family released a statement announcing their willingness to negotiate directly with the kidnappers.
At 8:20 PM, Bölling issued a statement that the “terrorists” had no option but to surrender. Twenty minutes later, the West German government requested an international news blackout of developments at the airport in Mogadishu.
At 11:00 PM on October 17, sixty GSG-9 agents stormed the airliner: guerilla fighters Zohair Youssef Akache, Hind Alameh, and Nabil Harb were killed, and Souhaila Andrawes was gravely wounded. One hostage suffered a heart attack and died, but, given how many were saved, the operation was considered a great success. All the more so, as it was the GSG-9’s first officially acknowledged mission.
The next morning, at 7:00 AM, a government spokesperson publicly announced the resolution of the hijacking.
One hour later, Bölling announced the “suicides” of Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader, and the “attempted suicides” of Jan-Carl Raspe and Irmgard Möller. Raspe died of his wounds soon after.
The following day, almost as a statement of victory, the government lifted the Contact Ban.
To all appearances, the prisoners had been killed in retaliation for the guerilla’s actions. The Siegfried Hausner Commando issued a communiqué announcing that it, in turn, had executed Schleyer. On the evening of October 19, police recovered his body in the trunk of a car in the French border town of Mullhaus, just where the RAF had said it would be.
After forty-three days, the most violent clash between the antiimperialist guerillas and the West German state had come to its bloody conclusion.
As the RAF would later acknowledge: “We committed errors in 77 and the offensive was turned into our most serious setback.”1
It would take some time for the guerilla to formulate the lessons to be drawn from this unprecedented defeat.
18.10.77—Gudrun, Andreas, and Jan were murdered in Stammheim—Solidarity with the Political Prisoners’ Struggle
“THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND THEIR SITUATION
ARE UNSTOPPABLE.”
Given the fact that the state has turned treatment outside of the legal norms into a permanent exception
and
that six years of state security justice has proven that when it comes to us, whether in manhunts or in prison, human and constitutional rights aren’t worth the paper they’re written on,
we demand
on behalf of the prisoners from the anti-imperialist groups struggling in the Federal Republic, treatment under the minimum guarantees of the 1949 Geneva Convention, specifically Articles 3, 4, 13, 17 and 130.2
Which, for the political prisoners in Hamburg, Kaiserslautern, Cologne, Essen, Berlin, Straubing, Aichach, and Stammheim would mean, at a minimum, and in keeping with the testimony of all expert witnesses at RAF trials, that the prisoners be brought together in groups of at least 15 and that they be allowed to interact freely with one another.
Concretely, we are demanding:
1. The abolition of isolation and group isolation in the prisons of the Federal Republic and the closing of special isolation wings, which are meant to destroy prisoners, and where any communication is recorded and analyzed.
2. Investigations into the deaths of Holger Meins, Siegfried Hausner, and Ulrike Meinhof by an International Commission of Inquiry, support for the work of this Commission, and the publication of its findings in the Federal Republic.
3. The government must publicly and clearly acknowledge that the claims that:
• the RAF planned to set off three bombs in downtown Stuttgart (June 72);
• the RAF planned to poison the drinking water in a large city (Summer 74);
• the RAF stole mustard gas and planned to use it (Summer 75);
• the Holger Meins Commando set off the explosives in Stockholm themselves (April 75);
• the RAF planned to contaminate Lake Constance with atomic waste (September 75);
• the RAF planned attacks against nuclear power plants and planned to make use of nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological weapons (since January 76);
• the RAF planned a raid on a playground to take children hostage (March 75).
are psychological warfare fabrications, used to legitimize an aggressive police force and state security apparatus, to disrupt solidarity with the resistance groups, and to isolate and destroy them; that all of these claims are false and that the statements released by the police, intelligence agencies, and the judiciary in this regard are baseless.
The hunger strike
is an example of our solidarity
• with the hunger strike of prisoners from the Palestinian resistance for prisoner of war status;1
• with the hunger strike for political status of the IRA prisoners in Irish and English prisons, status they are denied on the basis of a European antiterrorism law put forward by the Federal Republic;2
• with the demand of the ETA prisoners and other antifascist forces in Spain for an amnesty;3
• with all those taken prisoner in the struggle for social revolution and national self-determination;
• with all those who have begun to fight against the violation of human rights, the miserable conditions and the brutal repression in the prisons of the Federal Republic.
ARM THE RESISTANCE!
ORGANIZE THE UNDERGROUND!
CARRY OUT THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST OFFENSIVE!
The RAF prisoners
March 29, 1977
For “protagonists of the system” like Buback, history always finds a way.
On April 7, 1977, the Ulrike Meinhof Commando executed Attorney General Siegfried Buback.
Buback was directly responsible for the murders of Holger Meins, Siegfried Hausner, and Ulrike Meinhof. In his function as Attorney General—as the central figure connecting and coordinating matters between the justice system and the West German news services, in close cooperation with the CIA and the NATO Security Committee—he stage-managed and directed their murders.
Under Buback’s regime, Holger was intentionally murdered on November 9, 1974, by systematic undernourishment and the conscious manipulation of the transportation schedules from Wittlich to Stammheim. The BAW calculated that they could use the execution of a cadre to break the prisoners’ collective hunger strike against exterminationist prison conditions, after the attempt to kill Andreas through the manipulation of force-feeding failed due to the mobilization of public pressure.
Under Buback’s regime, Siegfried, who had led the Holger Meins Commando, was murdered on May 5, 1975, as the MEK (Mobiles Einsatzkommandos) detonated the explosives at the German Embassy in Stockholm. While he was under the exclusive jurisdiction of the BAW and the BKA, he was delivered to the FRG and his life was put in danger as he was transported to Stuttgart-Stammheim, thereby assuring his death.
Under Buback’s regime, Ulrike was executed in a state security action on May 9, 1976. Her death was staged as a suicide to make the politics that Ulrike had struggled for seem senseless.
The murder was an execution; it followed the BAW’s attempt to render Ulrike a cretin through a forced neuro-surgical operation, after which she was to be presented—destroyed—at the Stammheim trial, so as to condemn armed resistance as an illness. This project was prevented by international protests.
The timing of her murder was precisely calculated:
• before the decisive initiative in the trial, the defense motion that would have explained the 1972 RAF attacks against the U.S. Headquarters in Frankfurt and Heidelberg in light of the FRG’s participation in the U.S.A.’s aggressive human rights violations in Vietnam;
• before Ulrike could be called as a witness in the Holger Meins Commando’s Düsseldorf trial, where she would have testified about the very extreme form of torture that they used against her for 8 months in the dead wings;
• before her sentencing—at which point critical international public opinion, which had developed as a result of the Stammheim show trial and the cynical use of imperialist violence, would have been informed of the role of the federal government and its executive organs. This would have caused all of this to rebound against them.
Ulrike’s history, in a way that is clearer than that of many combatants, is a history of resistance. For the revolutionary movement, she embodied an ideological vanguard function, which was the target of Buback’s showpiece, the simulated suicide: her death—which the BAW used in propaganda to show the “failure” of armed struggle—was meant to destroy the group’s moral stature, its struggle, and its impact. The BAW’s approach, which they have followed since 71 with manhunts and operations conducted against the RAF, follows the counterinsurgency strategy of the NATO Security Committee: criminalization of revolutionary resistance—for which the tactical steps are infiltration, disrupting solidarity, isolating the guerilla, and eliminating its leadership.
Within the imperialist FRG’s anti-guerilla counterstrategy, the justice system is a weapon of war—used to pursue the guerilla operating underground and to exterminate the prisoners of war. Buback—whom Schmidt called “an energetic combatant” for this state—understood the conflict with us as a war and engaged in it as such: “I have lived through the war. This is a war using different means.”
We will prevent the BAW from murdering our fighters in West German prisons, which it intends to do simply because the prisoners will not stop struggling and the BAW sees no solution except their liquidation.
We will prevent the BAW and the state security organs from retaliating against the imprisoned fighters for the actions of the guerilla outside.
We will prevent the BAW from using the prisoners’ fourth collective hunger strike for minimum human rights as an opportunity to murder Andreas, Gudrun, and Jan, which psychological warfare since Ulrike’s death has been openly promoting.
ORGANIZE THE ARMED RESISTANCE AND THE
ANTI-IMPERIALIST FRONT IN WESTERN EUROPE.
WAGE WAR IN THE METROPOLE AS PART OF THE
INTERNATIONAL WAR OF LIBERATION.
Ulrike Meinhof Commando
April 7, 1977
In recent days, all efforts to break the hunger strike of the remaining 100 prisoners through force-feeding—with extreme brutality in the case of Hamburg-Holstenglacis—have failed. After the prison doctor in Stammheim and the anaesthetist they brought in refused to forcibly administer psychiatric drugs or narcotics to the prisoners, the prison warden, today, April 30, 1977, at 12 o’clock, read us a “Binding Declaration from the Ministry of Justice” to the effect that, “after considering the opinion of medical advisors, there will be an immediate centralization in Stammheim of all political prisoners—i.e., §129a prisoners—including those from other Länder in the Federal Republic, and that to this end work will be done to create the prison space necessary.”
This decision is based on a cabinet resolution.
This fulfils the major demand of the hunger strike.
The RAF prisoners are calling off their strike.
“Whoever is not afraid of being drawn and quartered will pull the emperor off his horse.”
Gudrun Ensslin
for the RAF prisoners
April 30, 1977
In a situation where the BAW and state security are scrambling to massacre the prisoners, we haven’t got a lot of time for long statements.
Regarding Ponto and the bullets that hit him in Oberursel, all we can say is that it was a revelation to us how these people, who launch wars in the Third World and exterminate entire peoples, can stand dumbfounded when confronted with violence in their own homes.
The “big money” state security smear campaign is bullshit, as is everything that has been said about the attack.
Naturally, it is always the case that the new confronts the old, and here that means the struggle for a world without prisons confronting a world based on cash, in which everything is a prison.
Susanne Albrecht
on behalf of a RAF Commando
August 14, 1977
Over the past week, we learned from a member of Amnesty International that the International Executive Committee’s mediation process—to establish more humane prison conditions, in line with the doctors’ demands, and to bring the hunger strike to an end—had broken down, because “the situation had hardened.” And, “following the attacks against the BAW and Ponto, the authorities had received instructions from above to make an example of the prisoners.”
That is in keeping with Rebmann’s announcement.
As a result, the prisoners have broken off their strike on the 26th day—so as not to facilitate the murderous plan. They arrived at this decision after they were openly made hostages of state security, and taking into account the federal government’s efforts—arrests, raids, and detentions at the borders—to disrupt the grievance at the Human Rights Commission in Strasburg regarding human rights violations in the Federal Republic.
Jan-Carl Raspe
for the RAF prisoners
September 2, 1977
All the theories about the apparatus which we used to prevent the federal prosecutors from sitting comfortably in their offices musing about how to arrange the next murder of a political prisoner, or planning a manhunt or a show trial or raids against citizens and lawyers who sympathize with us, or fabricating all of the lies and the hatred of the “information offensive”—are false.
It wasn’t used to create a bloodbath—in this nest of reactionary violence, which already during the communist trials of the fifties sided with the ongoing fascism—or as part a “new strategy” or the “arms race between rival guerilla groups” that we read about.
Nor was it used to attack Rebmann, although he appears to be even more unscrupulous, more brutal, and a more loathsome demagogue than Buback.
It was simply meant as a warning, in a situation where over forty political prisoners were on hunger strike, because when he was Undersecretary for the Ministry of Justice in Baden-Wurttemburg, Rebmann promised to allow the prisoners’ association in groups of 15. As Attorney General, he has reversed himself and broken this promise.
The group that previously existed in Stammheim is now smaller instead of larger, and the prisoners are now—after five years of isolation—once again totally segregated from one another, despite the fact that doctors, Amnesty International, the World Council of Churches, the League for Human Rights, and the Association of Democratic Jurists have all demanded that they be granted association, because isolation causes illness and, with time, death—that is to say, as a form of imprisonment, isolation constitutes torture and is a violation of human rights.
We proceeded from the view that following Buback’s removal from office because of the murders of Holger, Ulrike, and Siegfried, and given the complete isolation the hunger strike provoked, Rebmann felt a need to distinguish himself by using the situation to execute Andreas, Gudrun, and Jan.
We agree with the prisoners’ decision to break off their hunger and thirst strike, and we ask them to not resume it for the time being, not until we know whether the sanctimonious gang of murderers—the Ministers of Justice, judges, prosecutors, and cops—will choose to remain as arrogant in the face of our weapons, which we can use, as they do in the face of the weapons the prisoners have at their disposal.
The moral appeal of a hunger strike is useless, because this state’s political violence is not in danger of becoming “fascistoid” or of showing “fascist tendencies,” but is transforming itself into a new fascism, one that differs from National Socialism only inasmuch as it represents American and German monopolies, and can therefore proceed more aggressively, more powerfully, and more subtly than German capital during its barbaric nationalist period.
Whether they are part of the justice system, the executive, the political parties, the corporations, or the media, the greasy elite understand only one language: violence.
The misery and humiliation in the state security wings and the barbarism of force-feeding is for them no more than their own sick in-joke for the lunchroom.
Should it be taken up again, they intend to use the strike to kill you, just like now, because we need you, and they want to take every trace of morality and solidarity that the sacrifice of your struggle has produced and bury them under a mountain of shit, a mountain of cynical rumormongering and propaganda.
They’d like to have a good long laugh at our expense. Those who understand the struggle in the isolation holes (the dungeons, the torture of force-feeding)—those who understand the prisoners’ determination, know that it is possible to be free. We will not make any further demands, and the ongoing activity and solidarity of the RAF will not be limited to communiqués.
We repeat: should a prisoner be murdered—and death in an isolation cell is nothing other than murder—we will respond immediately, both inside and outside of Germany.
Should Andreas, Gudrun, and Jan be killed, the apologists for the hard line will find that they are not the only ones with weapons at their disposal. They will find that we are many, and that we have enough love—as well as enough hate and imagination—to use both our weapons and their weapons against them, and that their pain will equal ours.
“THE SOLIDARITY OF THE PEOPLE
IS GROUNDED IN REVOLT.”
RAF
September 3, 1977
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1977
The federal government must take steps to ensure that all aspects of the manhunt cease—or we will immediately shoot Schleyer without even engaging in negotiations for his freedom.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1977
On Monday September 5, 1977, the Siegfried Hausner Commando took Hanns Martin Schleyer, the President of the Federal Association of German Industries and the President of the Employers Association, captive. Regarding the conditions for his release, we will repeat our first communiqué to the federal government, which we have learnt has been suppressed since yesterday by the security staff. That is, all aspects of the search for us must be immediately discontinued or Schleyer will be shot immediately. As soon as the manhunt stops, Schleyer will be released under the following conditions:
RAF prisoners: Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, Verena Becker, Werner Hoppe, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Hanna Krabbe, Bernd Rössner, Ingrid Schubert, and Irmgard Möller must be released in exchange for Schleyer, and must be free to travel to a country of their choosing. Günter Sonnenberg, who is unfit for imprisonment due to a gunshot injury he suffered during his arrest, must be immediately released. The warrant for his arrest must be lifted. Günter will leave with the 10 other prisoners, with whom he must immediately be placed so they can talk. The prisoners must be assembled at 8:00 AM on Wednesday at the Frankfurt Airport. Between then and their departure at 12:00 noon, they must be allowed to talk freely and unimpeded amongst themselves. At 10:00 AM, one of the prisoners will enter into direct communication with the commando via German television to inform us that their departure is unfolding according to plan.
For purposes of public oversight and to safeguard the prisoners’ lives between takeoff and landing, we propose that the prisoners be accompanied by Payot, the General Secretary of the United Nations’ International Federation of Human Rights, and Pastor Niemöller. We request that they accept this role to ensure that the prisoners arrive at their chosen destination alive. Naturally, we would agree to any alternative proposal from the prisoners.
Each prisoner will be given 100,000 DM. This communiqué, which can be authenticated by Schleyer’s photo and his letter, must be broadcast unedited and unaltered on the Tagesschau this evening at 8:00 PM. We will establish the concrete details for freeing Schleyer as soon as we receive confirmation that the prisoners have been freed, that they won’t be extradited, and when the federal government releases a statement guaranteeing that it won’t pursue extradition. We are assuming that Schmidt, who demonstrated in Stockholm how quickly he can make decisions, will be equally quick this time given his personal connection to this greasy magnate of the cream of the national business world.
Siegfried Hausner Commando
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1977
We presume that the decision not to broadcast our demands and ultimatum on yesterday’s 8:00 PM Tagesschau, as we had stipulated, is the result of a decision taken behind closed doors by the Crisis Management Team and reflects a decision by the federal government to resolve the situation militarily. The BKA’s ploy, demanding proof that Schleyer is alive, even though they received Schleyer’s handwritten letter yesterday and are also in possession of a photo of him taken yesterday, has the same function of buying time. We will only respond to the questions the BKA published today, when it is clear that the federal government is holding up its end of the deal—and we are running out of patience repeating this:
The manhunt must be stopped immediately. The prisoners must be gathered together in one place. The confirmation that this has been done will be delivered by one of the prisoners on German television today. As a clear gesture, we demand that the video recording, in which Schleyer reads his letter attached here, be broadcast on every television news show that airs at 6:00 PM tonight.
Siegfried Hausner Commando
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1977
There will be no further communiqués from us until the prisoners are flown out. The federal government has enough proof to assure them that Schleyer is alive: his letter and the videotape, as well as the recording with his answer to both questions. Go-betweens are unnecessary, as are all other stalling tactics. A resolution which includes Schleyer’s release depends on the departure of the prisoners: otherwise it is not happening. For the last time, we demand:
That the federal government publicly announce its decision by 8:00 PM this evening. By Friday at 10:00 AM, proof that preparations have been made for the prisoners’ departure. By 12:00 noon, the prisoners’ departure on a fully fueled Lufthansa long haul aircraft must be broadcast live on television. The remaining demands are known to you from the previous communiqués.
Siegfried Hausner Commando
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1977
We will wait until 12:00 AM for a decision from the federal government as to whether they want to make the exchange or not, and that decision should come in the form of obvious preparations for assembling the prisoners. The way in which this should occur has already been established. One of the prisoners must confirm that preparations are underway. The prisoners themselves will inform the federal government of possible destinations. The federal government will receive no further response from us to BKA messages transmitted via Payot. Should the federal government decide to once again allow our ultimatum to pass in silence, they will be responsible for the consequences.
Siegfried Hausner Commando
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1977
We have nothing to add to our statement of September 12, 1977. We request that Monsieur Payot play the role that the federal government assigned him, that role and that role only, and that he stop participating in the delays and postponements, which reflect a decision in favor of creating space to maneuver for a military solution.
The tactic of the so-called secret negotiations is absurd given the action’s goal: freeing the prisoners. We have responded to the federal government’s contemptible maneuvers for 9 days with multiple extensions of our ultimatum—they face a dilemma in that agreeing to the demands would contradict the institutionalized hate-driven civil war mentality they have whipped up against the RAF, and would require resisting the American thumbscrews. On the federal government’s side, during these 9 days there has not been a single concrete development to indicate a willingness to exchange Schleyer. The BKA’s claim that the manhunt was called off is a joke. Every newspaper carries photos of highway checkpoints and reports of homes raided. We are giving the federal government one last extension until 12:00 AM tonight to fulfil our demands.
Siegfried Hausner Commando
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1977
If the federal government still wants to save Schleyer’s life, they must immediately call off the manhunt in Germany, as well as arranging a halt to those that have begun in France, Holland and Switzerland. Our demand that all aspects of the search cease remains unchanged.
We are also warning the federal government not to tap our telephone conversations with Payot or attempt to use them in any other way in the search. We will only conduct further negotiations with the federal government through the lawyer Payot if they discontinue their tactic of attempting to prolong telephone calls with senseless conversation, and if it is made clear that measures are being taken to prepare the release of the 11 prisoners specified.
Further signs of life from Schleyer will only be forthcoming if there is concrete evidence that the exchange is being prepared.
Also, if the federal government continues to withhold information from us about the results of Wischnewski’s negotiations, all we have to say is that we know for certain that there are countries willing to take the 11 prisoners.
Siegfried Hausner Commando
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1977
We have given Helmut Schmidt enough time to choose between the American strategy for the extermination of liberation movements in Western Europe and the Third World, and the interests of the federal government in seeing that the most important industrialist alive today not be sacrificed to this imperialist strategy. The ultimatum of the “Martyr Halimeh” Commando’s Operation Kofr Kaddum and the ultimatum of the RAF’s “Siegfried Hausner” Commando are identical.
The ultimatum expires on Sunday, October 16, 1977, at 8:00 AM GMT. If, at that time, the eleven prisoners specified have not arrived at their destination, Hanns Martin Schleyer will be shot. After holding Schleyer for forty days, there won’t be another extension of the ultimatum or any further contact. Any delay will mean Schleyer’s death.
To save time, it won’t be necessary for Pastor Niemöller or the lawyer Payot to accompany the prisoners. We will receive confirmation of the prisoners’ arrival even without confirmation from escorts. Hanns Martin Schleyer will be freed within 48 hours of our having received confirmation. Freedom through armed anti-imperialist struggle!
Siegfried Hausner Commando
To all revolutionaries in the world
To all free Arabs
To the Palestinian masses
Today, Thursday, October 13, 1977, a Lufthansa 737 leaving Palma de Majorca en route to Frankfurt, flight number LH 181, passed into the complete control of the Commando “Martyr Halimeh”.
This operation has as a goal the liberation of our comrades in the prisons of the imperialist-reactionary-zionist alliance. This operation reinforces the goals and demands of the Commando “Siegfried Hausner” of the RAF, which commenced on 05-09-77.
Revolutionaries and freedom fighters of the entire world are confronted with the monster of world imperialism, the barbaric war against the peoples of the world, under the hegemony of the U.S.A.
In this imperialist war, the sub-centers like Israel and the FRG have the executive function of oppressing and liquidating all revolutionary movements in and on their specific national territory.
In our occupied land, the imperialist-zionist-reactionary enemy demonstrates the very high level of their hostility, of their bloody aggressivity, against our people and our revolution, against all the Arab masses and their progressive and patriotic forces. The expansionist and racist nature of Israel is, with Menachem Begin at the summit of this ensemble of imperialist interests, clearer than it has ever been.
On the basis of these same imperialist interests West Germany was constructed as a U.S. base in 1945. Its function was the reactionary integration of the countries of West Europe via economic oppression and blackmail. As far as the underdeveloped countries of the world are concerned. West Germany gives financial, technical, and military support to reactionary regimes in Tel-Aviv, Pretoria, Salisbury, Santiago de Chili, etc …
There is a close and special cooperation between the two regimes in Bonn and Tel-Aviv in the military and economic fields, as well as in the area of shared political positions. The two enemy regimes work together against patriotic and revolutionary liberation movements in the world in general and in Arab, African, and Latin American regions in particular. This is manifested by their providing racist and minority regimes in Pretoria and Salisbury with arms and atomic and military technology, by delivering mercenaries and credits to them, by opening markets for their products, by breaking boycotts and economic embargos surrounding them.
A significant example of the close cooperation between the Mossad, the German Secret Services, the CIA, and the DST is the filthy piracy of the imperialist-reactionary alliance: the Zionist invasion of Entebbe.
Actually, the identical character of Neo-Naziism in West Germany and Zionism in Israel is in the process of becoming clearer in the two countries:
• reactionary ideology is dominant.
• fascist, discriminatory, and racist labor laws are enforced.
• the worst methods of psychological and physical torture and murder are used against fighters for freedom and national liberation.
• forms of collective punishment are practiced.
• all guarantees of international law, such as laws governing the humane treatment of prisoners, a just trial, and a defense are completely abolished.
While the Zionist regime is the most authentic and practical continuation of Naziism, the government in Bonn and the Parties in parliament do their best to revive Naziism and expansionist racism, especially amongst military personnel and within the other State institutions.
Economic circles and the magnates of multinational corporations play an effective role in these efforts. Ponto, Schleyer, and Buback are blatant examples of persons who have effectively served old Naziism and who now, in practice, execute the goals of the Neo-Nazis in Bonn and the Zionists in Tel-Aviv, both locally and internationally.
Part of the anti-guerilla strategy of the enemies is non-acquiescence to the legitimate demands with the goal of freeing our imprisoned revolutionaries, who suffer the most cruel forms of torture with the silent awareness of the international public. We declare that this will not succeed. We will force the enemy to free our prisoners, who daily defy them by fighting oppression, even in prison.
VICTORY FOR THE UNITY OF ALL REVOLUTIONARY
STRENGTH IN THE WORLD
Struggle Against World Imperialism Organization
October 13, 1977
To the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of West Germany
this is to inform you that the passengers and the crew of the LH 737 plane, flight no. 181 leaving from Palma to Frankfurt, are under our complete control and responsibility. the lives of the passengers and the crew of the plane as well as the life of Mr. Hanns-Martin Schleyer depends on your fulfilling the following—
1. Release of the following comrades of the RAF from prisons in West Germany—Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, Verena Becker, Werner Hoppe, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Hanna Krabbe, Bernd Roessner, Ingrid Schubert, Irmgard Moeller, Guenter Sonnenberg—and with each the amount of DM 100,000.
2. Release of the following Palestinian comrades of PFLP from prison in Istanbul—Mahdi and Hussein.
3. The payment of the sum of $15 million U.S. dollars according to accompanying instructions.
4. Arrange with any one of the following countries to accept to receive all the comrades released from prison:
1. Democratic Republic of Vietnam
2. Republic of Somalia
3. People’s Democratic Republic of Jemen
5. The german prisoners should be transported by plane, which you should provide, to their point of destination. they should fly via Istanbul to take in the two Palestinian comrades released from Istanbul prison.
the turkish government is well informed about our demands. the prisoners should all together reach their point of destination before Sunday, 16th of Oct. 1977, 8.00 o’clock a.m. GMT. the money should be delivered according to accompanying instructions within the same period of time.
6. If all the prisoners are not released and do not reach their point of destination, and the money is not delivered according to instructions, within the specified time, then Mr. Hanns-Martin Schleyer, and all the passengers and the crew of the LH 737 plane, flight no. 181 will be killed immediately.
7. If you comply with our instructions all of them will be released.
8. We shall not contact you again. This is our last contact with you. You are completely to blame for any error or faults in the release of the above mentioned comrades in prison or in the delivery of the specified ransom according to the specified instructions.
9. Any try on your part to delay or deceive us will mean immediate ending of the ultimatum and execution of Mr. Hanns-Martin Schleyer and all the passengers and the crew of the plane.
S.A.W.I.O.
October 13, 1977
After 43 days, we have put an end to Hanns Martin Schleyer’s pitiful and corrupt existence. From the moment he began his power play, Herr Schmidt gambled with the possibility of Schleyer’s death: he can find him on rue Charles Peguy in Mulhouse in a green Audi 100 with Bad Homburg license plates.
As compensation for our pain and suffering over the massacres in Mogadishu and Stammheim, his death is meaningless. Andreas, Gudrun, Jan, Irmgard, and ourselves, we are not surprised by the dramatic and fascist methods the imperialists use to exterminate the liberation movements. We will never forget Schmidt and the alliance that participated in this bloodbath.
THE STRUGGLE HAS ONLY BEGUN.
FREEDOM THROUGH ARMED ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLE
Siegfried Hausner Commando
October 19, 1977
