Daniela Klette Receives 13-Year Sentence for Red Army Faction Robberies
A German court has imposed a 13-year prison sentence on Daniela Klette, 67, a former member of the Red Army Faction (RAF), for a succession of armed robberies spanning 1999 to 2016. Klette was apprehended in Berlin in 2024, concluding over 30 years as a fugitive.
The Verden court in Lower Saxony found Klette guilty of aggravated robbery, weapons offences, and other infractions following a trial initiated last year. Her defence had sought an acquittal, but the evidence presented focused on eight robberies across northern and western Germany.
Robbery Details and Accomplices
These criminal acts commenced in July 1999 in Duisburg, where masked assailants, including Klette, rammed a cash transport van and menaced guards with firearms and a grenade launcher, absconding with a substantial sum. The final raid, in June 2016, targeted an armoured transport van near Braunschweig, yielding almost €1.4 million.
Klette allegedly carried out these robberies alongside two other former RAF members, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub, both of whom remain at large. Despite decades on the run, prosecutors noted Klette made no significant effort to conceal her identity prior to her capture in Kreuzberg, where she resided under an assumed name with a foreign passport.
The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, was responsible for a campaign of murder, kidnapping, and bombings from the early 1970s to the early 1990s before its eventual disbandment.
