
Germany's top federal prosecutor's office on Friday filed more charges against Daniela Klette, a former member of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a disbanded German far-left terrorist organization.
Investigators accuse Klette of two counts of attempted murder, involvement in attempted and completed bomb attacks, hostage-taking for extortion and aggravated robbery as an accomplice, according to an indictment from the Federal Public Prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe.
The Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt must now decide whether and when a trial will take place.
The third generation of the RAF
The indictment accuses Klette of committing these crimes during her time in the RAF. She belonged to the so-called third generation of the group.
Charges relating to her membership of the left-wing terrorist organization are not possible now due to the statute of limitations.
However, prosecutors are accusing Klette of complicity in three RAF attacks between 1990 and 1993, among other charges.
She is alleged to have tried, with other RAF members in February 1990, to trigger an explosive blast in an administrative building of Deutsche Bank in Eschborn near Frankfurt.
According to the information, a VW Golf with 45 kilos of explosives in the boot was parked in the gateway. Klette helped install the explosives, prosecutors said.
Investigators believe an explosion could have killed three security guards. However, the detonator failed and there was no blast.
Attacks on bank, embassy and prison
Almost a year later, Klette is alleged to have carried out an attack on the US embassy in Bonn as part of a RAF commando unit.
Klette is also alleged to have been involved in a bomb attack on a newly built prison in Weiterstadt in the state of Hesse in March 1993.
Members of the RAF commando allegedly climbed over the prison wall, overpowered the guards with a submachine gun and took them off the site tied up in a VW van.
They then set off several explosive devices in the prison building, which Klette is alleged to have attacked, resulting in damages of around €63 million. There were still no prisoners housed in the prison.
Klette lived undercover in Berlin as "Claudia"
Klette's alleged accomplices Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg are also said to have been involved in the Weiterstadt crime. The two men remain on the run and are also under investigation.
Together with Klette, they are alleged by the public prosecutor's office in Verden to have robbed cash-in-transit vehicles and cash offices in Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein from 1999 to 2016 to finance their livelihood.
Klette has been on trial at the Verden regional court since early March 2025 over the robberies. The proceedings are legally separate from those brought by the federal prosecutor's office and are expected to end soon.
Klette had disappeared from view by 1990 at the latest. Outwardly, she apparently led an inconspicuous life.
When police arrested the former RAF terrorist on February 26, 2024 in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood of Berlin there was widespread surprise.
Neighbours knew her as "Claudia" and described her as a friendly, grey-haired private tutor.
Investigators found pistols, ammunition and even weapons of war in her flat.
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