Former member of German militant group jailed for armed robberies after 30 years on the run

Former member of German militant group jailed for armed robberies after decades on the run29 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleJessica Parker,Berlin correspondentandPaul Kirby,Europe digital editorPool/Getty ImagesDaniela Klette's defence lawyer had called for her acquittalA former member of the German militant group Red Army Faction (RAF) has been jailed for 13 years for carrying out a string of armed robberies between 1999 and 2016.Daniela Klette, 67, was finally caught in a flat in Berlin in 2024 after more than 30 years on the run. She went on trial last year.Her defence had called for her acquittal but the court in Verden in Lower Saxony found her guilty on Wednesday of aggravated robbery, violating weapons laws and other offences over a 17-year period.Klette's RAF group, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, was eventually disbanded after a campaign of murder, kidnapping and bombing from the early 1970s to the early 1990s.The court found Klette had robbed supermarkets and armoured vans along with two other former members of the RAF faction, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub, who have not yet been caught.Dozens of Klette's supporters booed the guilty verdict in court, chanting "freedom for Daniela". According to Hans-Jakob Schindler, head of the Counter Extremism Project in Berlin, she has become "a kind of grandmother heroine for the extreme left in Berlin".Klette did not explicitly admit to being an RAF member during the trial, and Schindler told the BBC she would never face trial for terrorism allegations against her from that period because of the statute of limitations.However, she could still face a further trial, as federal prosecutors allege she was complicit in three of the group's attacks.Klette was eventually tracked down to an unassuming Berlin block of flats in February 2024The trial focused on eight robberies across northern and western Germany, beginning in the city of Duisburg in July 199...