The Baader-Meinhof Gang

BBC news has this bit of 1970′s history:

“On 5 September, 1977, a woman with a pushchair stepped out in front of a car on a street in Cologne. The driver, who was chauffeuring one of West Germany’s most powerful industrialists, was forced to brake. The woman pulled out two machine guns, and her accomplices, following behind, bundled Hanns Martin Schleyer out of the car. His bodyguards were killed at the scene and one month later, his body was found in the boot of a car.

Schleyer is one name on a list of more than 30 people killed by the Baader-Meinhof gang – or Red Army Faction as it later became known – during a campaign against members of the German elite and US military personnel which started in the late 1960s. Born from the radical student movement of that period, the RAF comprised mainly middle-class youngsters who saw themselves as fighting a West German capitalist establishment which they apparently believed was little more than a reincarnation of the Third Reich…

It was active from about 1970 – having grown out of student anti-Vietnam war protests – until 1992, when it abandoned violence. It formally disbanded in 1998.”

And now…

“A former member of the Baader-Meinhof gang is to be freed on probation after serving 24 years for her involvement in kidnappings and murders in the 1970s. A German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, qualifies for early release after serving a minimum proportion of her five life sentences.”