Word: mohnhaupt
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...terrorists now being considered for release were key, hard-core figures of the "second generation" of the RAF, those who succeeded the founding cadre around Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader. Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, a former journalism student, was appointed leader of the group in 1977; Christian Klar, 54, once deemed a "moralist" by his high school teacher, was among the last to insist that the group remain operative before it formally disbanded in 1998. In July 1977 - 14 months after Meinhof hanged herself in prison and three months after Baader and two other confederates were convicted of murder...
...Historians of the RAF say that by the time Klar and Mohnhaupt assumed their prominent roles in the group, the founders' ideals had become secondary to all-out war on the state. "Once [Klar] started shooting," recalled one acquaintance recently to the weekly Der Spiegel, "he couldn't stop until the magazine was empty." For a generation of Germans who survived World War II, the violence of those years awakened old traumas. "The RAF is history, thank God," says Butz Peters, a Berlin lawyer who has written several books on the group. "But the emotions associated with it - the powerlessness...
...Mohnhaupt and Klar were arrested in 1982 and convicted respectively on 18 and 20 counts of murder and attempted murder; both were sentenced to life in prison in 1985. While German lifers, on average, become eligible for parole after 17 years, the judge ordered Mohnhaupt and Klar to serve at least 24 and 26 years respectively, in light of their "particularly heavy guilt." Mohnhaupt may be paroled next month, and her prison warden said her psychological assessment showed no risk of "backsliding." Klar is not eligible for parole until 2009, but he has appealed for early release. "Of course...
...Family members of the RAF's 34 victims, including Schleyer's widow, have joined conservative politicians in urging the President to reject Klar's application. Some want Mohnhaupt kept in jail, too. Markus Söder, general secretary of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Angela Merkel's ruling Christian Democrats, said that releasing the prisoners would be a "slap in the face" for the victims and their relatives. A recent poll conducted by the Bonn-based firm Omniquest found 65% of Germans against Klar being granted early parole; the proportion rose to 73% among Germans aged...
...Mohnhaupt's arrest triggered memories of an incident in Milan, shortly after Moro's kidnaping. Among motorists stopped by police roadblocks was a 30-year-old Milanese leftist who immediately tried to swallow a piece of notepaper. Police retrieved a segment of the note; it was written in German and signed "Brigitte." The swallower insisted that he was simply a messenger, and that the note was about the "Russell tribunal" (a radical political colloquium in Frankfurt, named for British Lord Bertrand Russell, that discussed West German civil rights violations). He was released, but the curiosity lingered on. Could the Zagreb...