One of Germany’s most wanted fugitives was arrested on Monday after living in plain sight in Berlin, just a few kilometers from the seat of the government that police say he fought to overthrow in the 1990s.
The woman, Daniela Klette, who eluded police for decades, is wanted in connection with a prison bombing in 1993. Police say they believe she was a member of the Red Army Faction, originally known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. Germany’s most notorious post-war terrorist group.
During her time in hiding, police say Ms. Klette and two accomplices, Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, who are also wanted in connection with Red Army Faction activities, committed at least 13 violent robberies, paying off about two million euros. (just over $2.1 million).
Heavily armed police arrested Ms Klette, 65, in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin in a rented flat in a plain, beige eight-storey building on a street where the Berlin Wall stood during the Cold War. When he was arrested, they said, he presented an Italian passport with a false name. Police also said they found two magazines of ammunition and bullets in the apartment, but no gun.
On Tuesday afternoon, police confirmed the arrest of an elderly man from Ms Klette’s circle, but gave no details beyond saying his age matched the profile of her alleged accomplices.
The arrest comes after a years-long investigation during which police sifted through thousands of leads, many of which led nowhere.
“Terrorists can never feel safe, not even after 30 years,” Daniela Behrens, the undersecretary responsible for the police, told a hastily arranged press conference in Hanover on Tuesday.
State police in Lower Saxony, where Hanover is located, are leading the investigation into Ms Klette and her associates for crimes they are accused of committing since 1999 to finance their lives in hiding.
“We stood at different doors, to coin a phrase, in different places, not only in Germany,” said a triumphant Friedo de Vries, president of the Lower Saxony state police, noting that the police had to “accept the failures” before making the arrest. Federal authorities will be responsible for prosecuting and prosecuting Ms. Klette and her associates for any politically motivated crimes where the statute of limitations has not run out.
The prosecutor leading the investigation recently launched another major public appeal to find the trio, who the media are calling RAF retirees. A prosecutor appeared on the German version of “America’s Most Wanted” to remind people of the investigation and the fact that there was a reward of 150,000 euros, about $163,000.
The tip that led to Monday’s arrest finally came in November, police said. It took the intervening months to ensure that the woman who lived in the apartment in Kreuzberg, who, neighbors told tabloid Bild, taught children, walked her large white dog daily and was unmistakably kind, was in fact one of most wanted in Germany. Ms Klette, who police said did not resist arrest, was brought before a judge in Lower Saxony on Tuesday.
The Red Army Faction, or RAF, was active from the 1970s to the 1990s and included several separate cells whose attacks on the state spanned decades, ultimately leading to the deaths of 33 people. The insurgents followed a Marxist-Leninist ideology and targeted American and capitalist interests in West Germany.
Ms Klette, who was just 18 when many of the original members of the group died in a suicide pact in a maximum security prison in 1977, was part of the third generation of the RAF, which is believed to have included around 25 active members and hundreds supporters.
He is believed to have played a role in the bombing of a newly built part of a prison in Hesse, which resulted in no injuries or death, but damage of about 80 million German marks, then about $45 million.
The RAF was disbanded in 1998.
Authorities say they believe it was only a year later that Ms. Klette and her two accomplices began robbing supermarkets at gunpoint.
On Tuesday, investigators said they were still searching Ms. Klette’s apartment, specifically for evidence that would lead to her two accomplices.
“Despite the various setbacks, we always believed that sooner or later we would be successful,” Mr de Vries said on Tuesday.
