The trial of Daniela Klette, a former member of Germany's far-left Baader-Meinhof gang who was arrested last year after more than 30 years on the run, started on Tuesday in Celle, northern Germany. The 66-year-old is accused of a series of armed robberies.
Klette was part of the radical anti-capitalist group also known as the Red Army Faction (RAF), which carried out a series of bombings, kidnappings and killings in the 1970s and 1980s.
She was arrested in February 2024 at her Berlin flat, where police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, explosives and large sums of cash, after apparently hiding there in plain sight for two decades.
Weeks earlier, the creators of a German "most wanted" podcast had stumbled across photos on Facebook of Klette in Berlin attending classes on capoeira - an Afro-Brazilian martial art that includes elements of dance, acrobatics, music and spirituality.
The trial relates to robberies Klette allegedly committed with two other gang members to finance their life in hiding after the RAF disbanded in 1998.
According to the website of the court in Celle, Klette is accused of "having committed a total of 14 criminal offenses in Stuhr-Groß Mackenstedt and at other locations between 30 July 1999, and 26 February 2024."
The offences include four attacks on money transporters and nine cash heists from shops in which the suspects fled with a total of €2.7 million, according to prosecutors.
Klette is said to have acted mainly as the getaway driver but also faces one charge of attempted murder.
Prosecutors said she carried a realistic-looking dummy bazooka during some of the heists.
The trial is set to last around two years and will hear from 12 witnesses, according to the court.
After she was detained, prosecutors also had Klette formally arrested on suspicion of involvement in three attacks in the 1990s, while the gang was still active.
Named after two of its early leaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the Baader-Meinhof gang emerged out of the radical fringe of the 1960s student protest movement.
The group's members took up arms against what they saw as US imperialism and a "fascist" German state that was still riddled with former Nazis.
Dummy bazooka
At the height of its notoriety in 1977, the group shot dead a German bank chief and kidnapped and killed industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former SS officer.
Though the so-called German Autumn of 1977 marked the beginning of a long period of decline for the RAF, the group continued to operate for another two decades.
Klette was part of a notorious trio - along with fellow gang members Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg - who were active as part of the RAF's "third generation" in the 1980s and 1990s.
After the RAF disbanded, Klette and the two men are believed to have financed their lives in hiding through armed robberies.
Police are still searching for Staub and Garweg, who would now be 71 and 56 if they are still alive.
Fake identity
Klette reportedly put up no resistance when she was arrested at her apartment in Berlin's bohemian Kreuzberg neighbourhood.
According to German media reports, she had been using a fake Italian passport and going by the name of Claudia Ivone.
Neighbours told the Bild daily she had a partner about the same age as her and always said: 'Hello' when she went out walking with her dog.
Klette had no bank account and likely paid her rent in cash, possibly for several months or years at a time, according to Der Spiegel magazine.
The attacks Klette is accused of committing in the 1990s, which are being dealt with in separate proceedings, include an attempted assault on a Deutsche Bank building in Eschborn, near Frankfurt.
She is also accused of playing a role in a 1991 RAF attack on the US Embassy in Bonn, which was the German capital at the time.
A third accusation relates to a 1993 explosives attack against a prison then still under construction in Germany's Hesse state.
(With newswires)
