Suspected former member of German left-wing militant group jailed after years on the run
By Sophie Tanno, CNN
(CNN) — A suspected former member of a German left-wing militant group who was once considered one of Europe’s most wanted women has been sentenced to 13 years behind bars for crimes she committed while a fugitive.
The regional court in Verden, Lower Saxony, found Daniela Klette, 67, guilty of multiple counts of aggravated robbery, extortion and weapons violations, offenses that took place between 1999 and 2016, when she was on the run from authorities after the Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group officially disbanded.
Klette is understood to have carried out these crimes alongside two alleged accomplices, Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg. The pair are also former RAF members and remain at large.
The verdict was met with outrage from some spectators in the courtroom, who shouted “Freedom for Daniela,” German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported. According to the outlet, Klette enjoys the support of some far-left circles in the country.
Klette has not yet been tried or sentenced for the crimes she allegedly committed while in the RAF, which will be handled in a separate legal case. She has not explicitly admitted to being a former RAF member.
The RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof group, emerged from a radicalized left-wing student protest movement in West Germany in the late 1960s. It carried out violent crimes throughout the 1970s and 1980s with deadly bombings, kidnappings and shootings, with the goal of dismantling the capitalist system and what they viewed as Western imperialism.
West German politicians as well as high-profile figures in the banking, military and business world were targets, and 34 people were killed, including Dresdner Bank head Jürgen Ponto and federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback.
Despite being the only woman tagged as “dangerous” on Europol’s most-wanted list, she successfully evaded detection from authorities for almost half her life.
Klette had been on the run for almost 30 years when in February 2024 she was tracked down and arrested in a Berlin neighborhood, where she had been living an apparently normal life for years under the assumed name Claudia Ivone.
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