Defense Attorney Siegfried Haag Goes Underground

Attorney General Buback and the state security police are attempting to have me imprisoned on the basis of a series of totally fabricated allegations.

During the search of my home and my offices, with the participation of Federal Prosecutor Zeis, who was also armed, state security police seized a large number of files concerning my clients’ defense, notes from discussions regarding the preparation of their defense, as well as correspondence. At the same time, they seized my personal notes for the impending trial against Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, and Jan-Carl Raspe.

Given the gravity of what has happened here, the intentional destruction of the last place where the accused prisoner might still place some trust—the trust a defendant places in his lawyer—this can be qualified as an openly fascist act of violence.

This is a state where the extermination of revolutionaries is part of the program, with legislation and the justice system mobilized towards this end, a state that tortures political prisoners by subjecting them to systematic isolation for extended periods and to brainwashing in special units created for this purpose within the prisons. This is a state where functionaries have executed Holger Meins and Siegfried Hausner. This is a state that slanders its lawyers using the entire arsenal of psychological warfare—using the media to conduct its malicious campaign—that excludes them, treats them like criminals, and finally imprisons them. In a state like this, I will not allow my freedom to be threatened any longer, nor will I be exercising my profession as a lawyer any more.

It is time for those of us who are struggling against imperialism to move on to more important tasks.