German Prosecutors Formally Indict Former RAF Member Daniela Klette for Terrorist Attacks

Germany's Federal Public Prosecutor has indicted Daniela Klette, a 67-year-old suspected former member of the Red Army Faction, on charges including two counts of attempted murder, involvement in attempted and completed bomb attacks, kidnapping for extortion, and aggravated robbery. The charges, announced by the prosecuting authority in Karlsruhe, relate to three major incidents between 1990 and 1993 in which Klette allegedly participated as part of RAF commandos. The indictment was first reported by Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, and WDR. Klette was arrested on February 26, 2024, in Berlin's Kreuzberg district after more than three decades in hiding. Her neighbors had known her as "Claudia" and described her as a friendly, gray-haired tutor.

45 kilograms of explosives, a failed detonator, and a near-miss The first charge concerns an incident in February 1990, when Klette allegedly helped install explosives in a VW Golf parked in the entrance driveway of a Deutsche Bank administrative building in Eschborn, near Frankfurt am Main. The vehicle contained 45 (kg) — explosives loaded into VW Golf trunk in Eschborn attack of explosives. Investigators believe three security personnel could have been killed had the detonator not failed, preventing the blast. Less than a year later, in February 1991, Klette is accused of participating in a shooting attack on the United States embassy in Bonn. Together with two other shooters, she allegedly fired at least 250 shots with automatic long-barreled weapons at the embassy building from the opposite bank of the Rhine, with at least 57 projectiles striking the structure and twenty people placed in danger. The third incident, in March 1993, involved an explosive attack on a newly built prison in Weiterstadt, Hesse, where RAF members allegedly climbed the prison wall, overpowered guards with a submachine gun, handcuffed them, and transported them away in a VW transporter before detonating several explosive devices — some of which Klette is said to have placed herself. 63 (million euros) — damage caused in the Weiterstadt prison bombing The prison had not yet housed any inmates at the time of the attack.

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Two fugitive accomplices still at large across Germany Klette's alleged accomplices in the Weiterstadt prison bombing, Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, remain fugitives, with investigations ongoing against both men. According to the Verden public prosecutor's office, the three are also suspected of robbing cash-in-transit vehicles and cash offices in Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Schleswig-Holstein between 1999 and 2016 to finance their lives underground. Because of those robberies, Klette has been on trial before the Verden Regional Court since the beginning of March 2025, in proceedings legally separate from those of the Federal Public Prosecutor. Those robbery proceedings are expected to conclude soon. When police arrested Klette in her Berlin apartment in February 2024, they found pistols, ammunition, and war weapons — a discovery that underscored the extent to which she had maintained an armed existence while living under a false identity for decades.

Decades underground, a quiet alias, and a dramatic arrest The Red Army Faction was a West German far-left militant group active from 1970 until it officially disbanded in 1998. It carried out bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings, targeting figures in West German business, politics, and the military as well as American military and diplomatic installations. The group is also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, after two of its founding members. Klette is considered part of the RAF's so-called third generation, which was active from the mid-1980s onward and went underground as German authorities intensified their pursuit of remaining members. Klette had vanished from public view at the latest since 1990, according to investigators, and managed to live undetected in Berlin for years by adopting an inconspicuous identity. Her neighbors described her as a friendly, gray-haired woman who worked as a tutor, unaware of her alleged past. The Federal Public Prosecutor's indictment now brings the full weight of Germany's highest prosecuting authority to bear on her alleged role in the RAF's most destructive operations of the early 1990s. The Verden robbery trial and the new federal indictment represent parallel but legally distinct tracks, meaning Klette faces potential proceedings on multiple fronts simultaneously. The case has drawn renewed public attention to the RAF's legacy and to the question of how its remaining suspected members evaded capture for so long.