On October 18, 1977, at the height of the German Autumn, the most important leaders of the Red Army Fraction (RAF) committed suicide in the prison, after the failure of two terrorist actions to free them. was the order of the day in Germany. The escalation of violence was unprecedented in the country’s post-war history. Even after the arrest of its leaders, the Red Army Faction (RAF) group still showed strength.
In the first effort to recover its leaders, the RAF had kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer, then president of the Confederation of German Industry and the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations, in Cologne. In the action, the driver and three bodyguards of the businessman died. The terrorist group demanded the release of 11 of its captured members. Among them, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, inmates at the Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. The Helmut Schmidt government chose not to give in and buy time to find Schleyer’s captivity.
plane hijacking
The terrorists tightened the siege. On 13 October, a Lufthansa plane from Mallorca with German tourists was hijacked and had to land in Rome. The four Palestinian hijackers declared their support for the RAF and also demanded the release of the leaders imprisoned in Stuttgart.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Schleyer’s kidnappers were sending videotapes to the government, with increasingly dramatic appeals from the business leader. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, however, remained resolute in showing the terrorists that he would not give in.
From Rome, the Lufthansa Boeing took off for the Middle East and landed in Dubai, capital of Oman, on 14 October. The hijackers issued new ultimatums and created a climate of terror on board, simulating executions of passengers, humiliating them and brutally beating them.
The plane took off again, bound for Aden, Yemen, where the terrorists believed they were safer. However, the government forced them to proceed to Mogadishu, Somalia. There, Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, charged with all powers by Helmut Schmidt to solve the case, was already waiting for the plane in the control tower.
In principle, the representative of the German government signaled its willingness to exchange hostages. However, at midnight on the 17th to the 18th of October, a command of the German federal police sprang into action and, within minutes, dominated the situation at the African airport, freeing 91 hostages. The pilot had already been executed by the hijackers.
In the attack, three of the four Palestinian terrorists were shot dead. The last terrorist – a woman – was seriously injured. It was the end of five days and nights of fear and terror for the hostages.
Suicide in Stuttgart
That same night, three RAF leaders committed suicide in Germany. A day later, the body of Hanns Martin Schleyer was found in the trunk of an abandoned car on the German-French border. The businessman had been shot in the back of the head.
“Two staff at the Stuttgart Penitentiary Institute found detainee Raspe seriously wounded by a gunshot wound to the head while picking him up for breakfast. He was taken to a hospital, where he died. Baader was found dead on his cell floor. Like Raspe, he had shot himself with a pistol. Ensslin, on the other hand, was found hanged with a wire in her cell window,” announced Traugott Bender, Baden-Württemberg State Secretary of Justice. Autopsies confirmed the suicides.
Of those who attempted suicide that night, only Irmgard Möller survived, seriously injured. Suspicion soon fell on one of the terrorists’ lawyers, who would have taken the weapons to the cells.
“We were too naive. We always had to search the prisoners after the visits. But we relaxed, as they practically only had contact with lawyers. They never received other people,” recalls Horst Bubeck, a prison official.
According to him, the terrorists had no contact with the other detainees. An isolation they and their lawyers complained about emphatically. The seventh floor was reserved for RAF members and was considered a maximum security area.
“They themselves could meet daily, which was a novelty in a penitentiary at that time. This did not exist before, nor does it exist anymore. That is, they could spend five, six hours together and even spend the nights together, as long as they were men with men and women with women”, says Bubeck.
Baader, Ensslin and Raspe were buried in a mass grave in Stuttgart Cemetery.
DW avoids reporting on suicides because there are indications that reporting on the subject can lead people to imitate such actions. If you face emotional problems and have suicidal thoughts, be sure to seek professional help. You can get help at www.befrienders.org/english.
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