Remember the Red Army Faction in the seventies? They're back apparently and according to a report in today's Times are believed to be robbing for their retirement fund:
Three former Baader-Meinhof gang terrorists are suspected of coming out of hiding to carry out armed robberies that have netted them 380,000 Euros towards a "revolutionary retirement plan"
...it is now believed that the three suspects have emerged after 23 years not to bring down capitalism but to fund a nest egg for their retirement. Investigators in Lower Saxony believe that Ernst-Volker Staub, 61, Daniela Klette, 57, and Burkhard Garweg have stolen from security vans and supermarkets in northern Germany over the past seven months.
An ignominious end for a revolutionary group that caught the imagination of a generation of radicals. The RAF were often described as "anarchists" and received support from that milieu despite the fact they actually represented a very brutal strain of Marxism-Leninism and were believed to be sponsored by East Germany during the "Cold War " that dominated political outlooks in the seventies.
The RAF had been founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler and Ulrike Meinhof , the latter being a well known German journalist which led to the use of her name in the popular description of the group as the Baader-Meinhoff Gang".
Photo:By Website
They were responsible for a number of attacks which led to 34 deaths. In essence their philosophy was to force the state to become so oppressive the workers would rise up against capitalism. However German democracy proved strong enough to prevent that along with the fact German Workers were actually amongst the most prosperous in Europe.
Eventually of course they were caught and during their incarceration in Stammheim Prison were found to have "committed suicide". There are a lot of people who think they were actually murdered given the high level of scrutiny they had been kept under.
Conspiracy theorists have had a field day ever since.
Whatever these misguided individuals had fought for their legacy today is simply one of common criminality.
Nothing more.
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