WASHINGTON — Verena Becker, a former Red Army Faction terrorist, was arrested in Germany on suspicion of involvement in the killing of Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback, his driver and a police officer in 1977.
Becker, 57, is "strongly suspected" of aiding in Buback's assassination, the Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement today. The arrest follows a re-examination for DNA traces of the letters the RAF sent to authorities at the time claiming responsibility for the murders.
The Buback killing was part of an RAF-led wave of attacks culminating in 1977, which has been dubbed the "German Autumn," one of the darkest episodes in the country's post- World War II history. Victims also included Juergen Ponto, then chief executive of Dresdner Bank AG.
Red Army violence climaxed with the 1977 hijacking, aided by a Palestinian group, of a Lufthansa airliner, an incident that ended when the plane was stormed in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, by a German commando unit.
RAF members retaliated by murdering the chairman of the BDI industry lobby, Hanns Martin Schleyer, whom they had earlier kidnapped in Cologne. The campaign of violence ended when the RAF officially disbanded in 1998.
The group, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang after founding members Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, conducted a campaign aimed at bringing down the capitalist system.