A 30-year manhunt ended in the heart of Berlin when police special forces arrested former Red Army Faction guerrilla fighter Daniela Klette. She is one of the famous RAF trio, three ex-militants still on the run and among the most wanted in Germany. This trio emerged from the leadership of the third and final generation of the urban guerrilla group.
The arrest of Klette in Berlin marked the end of her successful evasion of authorities for over 30 years. Klette, now 66 years old, was found in an apartment where ammunition was allegedly discovered. Her identity, allegedly, was confirmed through her fingerprints.
Alongside Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, they have managed to elude capture for decades. The arrest in Berlin could tighten the circle around her comrades.
The arrest followed a recently launched public manhunt, also screened across Germany on billboards. Additionally, police forces raided relatives’ homes associated with the RAF trio in early 2023 in search of clues about the wanted revolutionaries.
Klette had been involved in left-wing revolutionary groups since 1975. She primarily engaged in Germany’s anti-NATO movement before affiliating herself with the RAF’s supporters network and eventually joining the group.
The RAF carried out attacks agaist imperialist, capitalist and state targets. The revolutionary organization was founded in 1970 and disbaned in 1998. They were particularly active during the 70s and 80s.
In the 1980′, the trio allegedly partly formed the command level of the third generation of the RAF. The third generation coordinated with other European guerrilla struggles like the Italian Red Brigades, and concentrated attacks against US and NATO targets, like the 1981 bombing of the US Air Force headquarters in Ramstein.
The bourgeois state alleges that Klette was involved in the very last RAF action which was a huge explosion targeting Weiterstadt prison in 1993. The attack is considered to be the most technically perfected attack incomparable in terms of damage to other RAF actions.*
Source: Abolition Media
DN Note
On 27 March 1993, the Red Army Faction (RAF) Command Katharina Hammerschmidt bombed and destroyed a newly built prison in Weiterstadt, near Frankfurt am Main in Germany. It was the RAF’s last major action before it dissolved. At least three armed and masked men and a woman climbed a high wall and entered the guardhouse around 1 am. The terrorists tied the 10 guards and locked them in a van near a landfill. They then brought in five cargoes with 200 kg of explosives. At 5:12 am, the explosives were detonated. RAF`s Command Katharina Hammerschmidt warned the population with signs that the prison was about to be blown up and asked them to get to safety. The Weiterstadt prison took eight years to build and cost 250 million Marks ($155 million). It was designed to be multi-use and high-tech. The blast managed to destroy the administration building and much of its security system. At the time the prison was not holding inmates yet – they were expected by May. Over $90 million in damages was caused. The prison had to be rebuilt, which took another four years when it opened and received inmates in May 1997.
Link to PDF of the communique released by the Red Army Faction:
https://socialhistoryportal.org/sites/default/files/raf/en/0019930330%2520EN_2.pdf
The new citizen cop weapon ‘AI image search’
It has come to our attention from infomation passed on to us by comrades in Germany that the former member of Red Army Faction, Daniele Klette, was possibly identified using a new repressive weapon of ‘Artifical Intelligence image search’. The program in question is named as ‘PimEyes’, which was used apparently by an ‘investigative’ citizen cop journalist from the snitch ‘investigative’ website Bellingcat, who put the police wanted notice of Klette from the 1990s through the AI image search. PimEyes is a facial recognition search website that allows users to identify all images on the internet of a person given a sample image. It is comparable to the facial recognition company Clearview which is a notorious for providing software to law enforcement and government agencies and other organizations. The company’s algorithm matches faces to a database of more than 20 billion images collected from the Internet, including social media applications. Several Twitter users claim to have used it in an effort to identify US Capitol rioters, for example.
For several years she was involved in a Brazilian culture centre in the Kreuzberg district, where she practised capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines dance and fighting. It is thought that the discovery of photographs of her with her capoeira group at Berlin’s annual carnival led to her identification and arrest. The cops have yet to confirm the link between the arrest and a podcast from 2023.
The use of Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recogintion software is not only dangerous in the hands of the authorities but also in its widespread use by the have a go heroes and citizen cops. With the increase of surveillance technologies pernmeating through all society, from the smart phone camera to the doorbell camera. All of these are presented as for personal safety and security but in actual fact are leading to the self-surveillance of our entire environment. In the past computer technology was brought forward in Germany in respose to the Red Army Faction’s attacks. Computerisation of taxes, rental agreements, wages, etc were able to be used to narrow down what the German security forces named as ‘sympathisers’, a minimal group of people they could place under surveiilance that did not buy into their electronic system, who they deemed as avoiding it especially if they paid using cash.
The same tactics that were learnt during the 70’s and 80’s are now being upgraded not only by using the advanced technolgies but asking even more for the ‘responsible citizen’ to be their extra pair of eyes in the corners of the society they cannot reach. The expansion of crime fighting ‘private eye’ style entities on the internet and social media such as blogs and podcasts that have already been mentioned fuel even further the active participation of growing online private security industry, by not only private companies but by any citizen who feels the need to fill the void in their life by becoming a Dick Tracey or Imspector Gadget for the day.
This article is only to highlight once again the danger of technology to be used as a weapon to surveil those who dare to resist as the Red Army Faction did, which becomes a weapon easily used by the society to surveil itself in the aid of the authorities and cops.
For the urban guerrilla, against the new surveillance technologies and all the citizen cops
The Uncivilized
Carlo Carrà, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1910-1911 (oil on canvas, 198.7×259.1 cm, currently at the Museum of Modern Art, New York).
