On Sunday, 14/4, responding to the call of the International Red Aid on an international day of action in solidarity with the arrested comrade D.Klette and comrades E.Staub and B.Garweg, who are persecuted as members of the RAF, we held a solidarity gathering outside the German embassy. The gathering lasted about an hour, with the comrades that participated shouting slogans. The banner was opened on Loukianou Street and leaflets were distributed.
The text of the intervention:
On February 26, 2024, after 34 years of living illegally, Daniela Klette was arrested, accused of participating in the Red Army Faction (RAF), as well as for a series of bank robberies after the dissolution of the organization in 1998. At the same time, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has launched a manhunt across Germany for Ernst Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg. Ernst Volker Staub had been imprisoned as a member of the RAF in the 1980s and had participated in the organization’s hunger strike in German prisons in 1984.
After his release in 1988, German authorities in early 1990 issued arrest warrants for Staub, Garweg, and Klette, due to which all three went into hiding. The warrants are based on DNA samples and connect the comrades with the armed attack on the U.S. embassy in Bonn in February 1991 and the bombing attack and destruction of the under-construction Weiterstadt prison in March 1993. After the dissolution of the organization in March 1998, all three continued to live in hiding, and law enforcement authorities continued to search for them, linking them again through DNA and fingerprints to robberies of money transports and banks in various parts of Germany. Information about how the authorities reached Klette’s arrest are unclear, as the police themselves do not clearly state how they tracked her down. It is rumored that they collaborated with journalists from the investigative site Bellingcat, who, through an artificial intelligence program, identified old photos of Klette’s arrests with current photos of her on social media, as well as an anonymous tip from an informant in November 2023.
The German state continues its relentless pursuit of those who participated or are accused of participating in the organization, as if 26 years have not passed since the dissolution of the RAF. The message is clear: the state will never forget those who resist, rebel, and revolt. Prosecutions therefore aim beyond the capture of the three, to disciplining and terrorizing those who resist today, those inspired by the struggle waged by the RAF in the heart of the beast in previous decades. In the case of the three persecuted comrades, we see another campaign of terrorism and slander against the organization and the solidarity movement.
This campaign is nothing new, as for decades the German state, in close cooperation with the establishment media, has been trying desperately to dissolve what they call the “myth of the RAF,” which is nothing but the social and political legitimization of the organizations of the competitive movement of European metropolises, something that is alive and well today, as evidenced by the fact that accused members have been untraceable for three decades. Today’s reality, moreover, proves that things would be better if the global wave of rebellion, of which the RAF was a part, had succeeded. In a situation where European states are militarizing, political power becomes increasingly reactionary, societies are impoverished, and Western imperialism once again shows its teeth, bloodthirsty in Gaza, the struggles waged inside and outside prisons in European metropolises become relevant as ever.
WHOEVER FORGETS THE PRISONERS OF WAR FORGETS THE WAR ITSELF
FREEDOM TO CAPTURED COMRADE DANIELA KLETTE
SOLIDARITY WITH THE PERSECUTED COMRADES ERNST VOLKER STAUB AND BURKHARD GARWEG
Solidarity assembly with the imprisoned, fugitive, and persecuted militants
Via & translated by Act for freedom now!
ΟΠΚΕ during a raid in the Exarcheia neighborhood of Athens