Woman caught after 30 years on the run is jailed for armed robberies

A erstwhile subordinate of the German militant radical Red Army Faction (RAF) has been jailed for 13 years for carrying retired a drawstring of equipped robberies betwixt 1999 and 2016.

Daniela Klette, 67, was yet caught successful a level successful Berlin successful 2024 aft much than 30 years connected the run. She went connected proceedings past year.

Her defence had called for her acquittal but the tribunal successful Verden successful Lower Saxony recovered her blameworthy connected Wednesday of aggravated robbery, violating weapons laws and different offences implicit a 17-year period.

Klette's RAF group, besides known arsenic the Baader-Meinhof gang, was yet disbanded aft a run of murder, kidnapping and bombing from the aboriginal 1970s to the aboriginal 1990s.

The tribunal recovered that Klette had robbed supermarkets and armoured vans on with 2 different erstwhile members of the RAF faction, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub, who person not yet been caught.

The proceedings focused connected 8 robberies crossed bluish and occidental Germany, opening successful the metropolis of Duisburg successful July 1999, erstwhile masked attackers rammed a currency transport van and threatened the guards with guns and a grenade-launcher, earlier making disconnected with a ample sum of money.

The last raid, successful June 2016, was connected an armoured transport van adjacent the metropolis of Braunschweig. The robbers seized astir €1.4m (£1.2m).

It was not until February 2024 that Klette was caught, surviving nether an assumed sanction and a overseas passport, successful an quiescent thoroughfare successful Kreuzberg.

She was moved to Lower Saxony, wherever galore of the robberies had taken place, to basal trial.

Although Klette had been connected the tally for decades, prosecutors said she made nary effort to fell her identity.