Elderly German Leftist Terror Group Member Sentenced After Decades on Run
A German court sentenced Daniela Klette, 67, a former Red Army Faction member, to 13 years for armed robberies committed while living as a fugitive for three decades.
Daniela Klette, once described as Germany’s most-wanted woman, was convicted Wednesday by a court in Verden on charges including aggravated robbery, attempted aggravated robbery, weapons violations, extortionate kidnapping, and aggravated extortion, according to Breitbart News.
Klette had been on the run since the 1990s due to her involvement with the Red Army Faction, a violent far-left terror organization responsible for killing dozens and injuring hundreds before its formal disbandment in 1998. She was finally apprehended on February 26, 2024, in Berlin, where authorities discovered she had been living openly under a false identity. Her conviction follows a trial that commenced in March 2025.
German prosecutors built their case around a series of armed robberies targeting cash-in-transit vehicles and supermarkets across Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia between 1999 and 2016. Klette allegedly carried out these crimes alongside two fellow former RAF operatives, Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, both of whom remain at large. Authorities believe the trio committed the robberies to finance their underground existence following the dissolution of their terror group.
German Court Sentences Ex-Baader-Meinhof Terrorist to 13 Years
The Verden court focused on eight specific robbery incidents, though five additional offenses were not pursued. Collectively, the group is believed to have stolen approximately 2.4 million euros, equivalent to roughly 2.8 million U.S. dollars, during their crime spree.
When police raided Klette’s Berlin apartment at the time of her arrest, they uncovered an arsenal that included multiple weapons, ammunition, a replica anti-tank weapon, forged identity documents, wigs, gold, and 240,000 euros in cash. Despite her fugitive status and violent past, Klette reportedly maintained what appeared to be an ordinary social life in Berlin, even traveling abroad on vacation and sharing her apartment with a Brazilian man who later stated he had no knowledge of her true identity until her arrest.
The sentencing hearing drew supporters of the elderly ex-militant to the courthouse, where they disrupted proceedings with boos and chants of “Freedom for Daniela” before being removed from the courtroom. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, told the BBC that Daniela Klette has become a kind of grandmother heroine for the extreme left in Berlin.
Klette’s legal troubles may not end with this conviction. Federal prosecutors filed attempted murder charges against her earlier this year related to actions she allegedly took during her time with the Red Army Faction. While terrorism charges connected to her RAF membership have passed the statute of limitations, prosecutors are seeking to hold her accountable for her alleged role in three attacks the far-left group carried out between 1990 and 1993.
The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was one of Western Europe’s most deadly postwar terror organizations, conducting bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and bank robberies from the 1970s through the 1990s in pursuit of revolutionary communist objectives.
With information from Breitbart News
