Daniela Klette: It’s a Settling of Accounts with This Particular History of Resistance
Trial statement at the Verden Regional Court, March 25, 2025.
I agree with the defense motion to dismiss. I would, however, like to add a few things. After the RAF [Red Army Faction] ended its urban guerrilla project in April, twenty-seven years ago, Burkhard Garweg, Volker Staub, and I were confronted with the BKA’s ongoing public manhunt for the alleged “last former RAF militants.”[1] In fact, Burkhard Garweg was only dragged into this public manhunt after the RAF had disbanded. The state’s response to the RAF’s self-dissolution was consistent with Bad Kleinen—the shooting of Wolfgang Grams—and the continued heavy sentences and long prison terms for prisoners from the RAF and the resistance—even after the RAF issued its de-escalation statement in 1992.[2]
We successfully evaded the state’s grasp for decades; unfortunately, in my case, only until February 26, 2024.[3] This was a very important time in my life. I faced numerous challenges and had many positive experiences. All this strengthened my conviction that a better world, one in which people live in harmony, is both necessary and possible, and that is what will get me through everything that is coming. Today I would like to thank all those who have stood by me and by us as friends and supportive acquaintances at various points. It was difficult not being able to openly tell our story, but that is a rule of the underground that protects everyone. I’m sorry that so many of my friends and passing acquaintances found themselves facing sometimes violent repression and the harassment of repeated interrogations entirely unprepared. I never thought it would be so widespread or so intense. I hope most of you still like me, because I am glad to know you all. On February 26, 2024, I was torn out of my existing life.
Over the last year, the files from the investigation have given me some insight into the full extent of the endless hunt for us. Here are just a few examples: former friends and comrades were spied on, the homes of our families were surveilled and searched, previous acquaintances were followed when they vacationed in other countries, people were interrogated at campsites and hotels, and even funerals were observed—a lot of shooting in the dark.
It seems that some people have spent their entire professional careers working on this search, and a huge amount of money has been spent. Such a high level of commitment proves that this was and is a hunt for political enemies and not simply for robbers. In the early days, even with a bounty that at one point reached a million DM, the BKA’s manhunt failed. The public wasn’t particularly interested in hunting us down. Why would they be? People didn’t feel threatened by the RAF and certainly not by alleged former militants after its dissolution.
In 2015, the Lower Saxony LKA and the Public Prosecutors’ Office in Verden took the lead in the manhunt for us in connection with some robberies, charging us with “attempted murder.”[4] This was intended to create a general sense of alarm in the hunt for us because of the alleged “danger we posed to the public.”
This was continually renewed by intermittent profiles of the wanted persons on Aktenzeichen XY and on various television reports[5]—often on anniversaries that had to do with the history of the RAF. Of course, it was always about the RAF and not just about robberies. This continued after my arrest, accompanied by an over-the-top hunt for Burkhard and Volker. It was a ramping up of what had been going on for a very long time without much publicity.
The fact that my neighbors were evacuated with the lie that explosives were stored in my apartment is a crass example of the defamation and agitation targeting us. My neighbors were meant to believe that I had them living on a powder keg for years and had endangered their lives. Forcing elderly people, people with health problems, children, and everyone else to spend a couple of freezing cold nights in buses provided to house them, worrying that their homes might blow up, just to instil fear and horror about us, is little more than psychological terrorism. It was completely clear on the day the search began that no such danger existed.
This fabricated grave danger was also used to justify the military-style raid on the caravan park where they believed Burkhard lived, as well as for numerous military-style searches in Berlin, accompanied by thuggish behavior and vandalism. They have me now, and all the hullabaloo about how dangerous I am is intended to serve as compelling evidence of the need for a heavy sentence, as well as to lay the groundwork for the subsequent trial, in which the Federal Prosecutors’ Office will bring charges against me for various militant actions against imperialist war, prisons, and capital, charges for which I will be sentenced by a Higher Regional Court. It will also be used to justify the ongoing witch hunt for Burkhard and Volker.
This trial is not about me. It is, yet again, about condemning the RAF, which has been history for twenty-seven years. It is about a settling of accounts with this particular history of resistance and fundamental opposition. It is also about future deterrence. Any thought of fundamental resistance to overcome the ruling capitalist system is to be stifled with the threat of a life shattered by years in prison. Nothing else would explain the insistence that it is absolutely necessary that we be prosecuted.
We are living in a situation that is coming to a head worldwide—in the form of a capitalist crisis. The West is fighting against the impending decline of its global hegemony and the international redistribution of power. Under the leadership of the FRG, Europe is to rearm and prepare for war. There are daily horror stories about the billions of euros that the new warmongering government wants to make available for armaments—i.e., for huge profits for the arms industry and for infrastructural work. Anyone hoping that the latter will lead to the repair of dilapidated school buildings and collapsed bridges, increased environmental protection measures, social housing, and women’s shelters to offer protection against the almost daily femicides, or to expand healthcare and local and long-distance public transport, will be disappointed. The military needs a huge network of roads, consumes massive amounts of energy, requires extensive telecommunications and AI, but has no need for bridges over which streetcars can chug along. The result will be “impoverishment through militarization.” The social focus will be on war preparations and the denial of basic necessities. To this end, fear of “the Russians” is stirred up on a daily basis, as if they were already on the outskirts of Berlin, weapons in hand. Propaganda works to create a mindset whereby every conflict must be resolved through military victory, by grinding the enemy into the ground and “destroying” them—“whatever it takes,” including the deaths of millions of people. This is about war with weapons of mass destruction that is AI-supported all the way up to a nuclear super-GAU.[6]
Humanity is being systematically brutalized—we are supposed to find it acceptable that the Mediterranean become a mass grave for refugees. We are also meant to accept as normal the far-right Israeli government’s genocide of the Palestinian population, including the destruction of their residential quarters, which has been broadcast on television and on the Internet for a year and a half. Various international organizations have defined this as genocide, and it has been understood and denounced as a major crime against humanity from the very beginning by the people of the Global South, and is now increasingly understood in the same way by a growing number of people in the West, including many Jews. This makes no difference; people who see things this way, particularly in Germany, are being persecuted and subjected to the vilest slander, including accusations of antisemitism. Solidarity with the Palestinians against this war is to be silenced, rather than stopping the supply of armaments to Israel and demanding an end to the genocide.
To prepare for war, you need lack of empathy to be widespread and indifference to be the reaction to all of the wars currently raging. For example, the Bundesnachrichtendienst dared to state publicly that it would be beneficial for Germany if the war between Ukraine and Russia were to continue until 2029!!![7] All of the wars being waged worldwide over the balance of power and control of the raw materials necessary for continued capitalist economic growth are supported and fueled by arms supplied by Europe and the US.
Social solidarity is to be eradicated by right-wing and racist agitation. The goal is to completely abdicate all responsibility to support refugees, the unemployed, and those who are dependent on other forms of social assistance in order to have a dignified life. The agitation against refugees and alleged scroungers before and during the last election is still ringing in our ears. Even if all social benefits were cut, it would do nothing to improve conditions for those still working. Queerfeminist gains are also to be reversed. It is obvious that a broad, diverse, and determined resistance movement is necessary to stop and roll back these destructive developments, and the warmongers are doing everything they can to prevent such a movement from arising. An increasing number of antifa, anti-capitalists, climate activists, and Kurdish and Turkish comrades are being imprisoned. We are witnessing numerous legal actions against people involved in Palestine solidarity work, and left-wing activists are once again being banned from their professions. This is the political background against which this trial is unfolding.
I will now turn my attention to the various things at play in this trial.
The claim that an unscrupulous gang was willing to sacrifice human lives for money—some remnant from the previous uprising that would continue to pose a danger to everyone—is intended to delegitimize the history of resistance and has no basis in reality!
To quote Burkhard Garweg: “An effort has been made to craft an image of us as a violent marauding band of thieves who pose a danger to the general public and who are also prepared to kill—merely for money. . . . [T]here is no reason to believe anything the police or judicial apparatus are saying. Their sole objective is to delegitimize fundamental opposition and create a climate in which state violence and repression seem justified.”
I demand an immediate end to the inflammatory manhunt for Burkhard Garweg and Volker Staub that is being conducted in the media and in all public spaces! There have been repeated large-scale police actions because reward-hungry informants claim to have seen one or the other. This is a success for the police and media agitation. It is also very dangerous and irresponsible and must stop immediately.
Back to the trial: the list of charges, the prison conditions—even if I am no longer being held in solitary as was initially the case—that are partly determined by contradictory and hysterical security measures, the media coverage—all of this sends a message that everything must be done to keep the RAF under control. There has been a systematic effort to make political discussion and the development and maintenance of important friendships extremely difficult. It is obvious that the justice system is trying to break me. Why else would requests for visits be rejected on absurd grounds and visitors who I have just begun to get to know, and with whom it has become possible to block out the three BKA, LKA, and JVA observers present and have a normal conversation, be repeatedly subjected to visiting bans?[8] Many of those who dare to visit me are subsequently interrogated by either the Federal Prosecutors’ Office or the BKA and are heavily fined if they refuse to cooperate. The investigating authorities obviously have carte blanche. All their actions toward me are intended to crush me.
The plan to treat this as a normal criminal proceeding was doomed from the start. Nobody believes it—not those who wish to see me spend years in prison, because I—like many others—continue to reject capitalism and patriarchy as inhumane, hostile to life, and destructive to the environment, nor those who care what happens to me and to us or who are in solidarity with us.
I would like to thank everyone who has come here today and everyone else who is sympathetically watching what is happening here. I am fully aware of my situation. This trial is based on a political calculation, despite claims to the contrary. So what can I expect here?
[1] BKA: Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Office), Germany’s main federal police force. The RAF had issued a statement announcing its dissolution in April 1998; its last action, the bombing of a new prison just before it was set to become operational, had been carried out in March 1993.
[2] Set up by an informant, RAF member Wolfgang Grams was shot dead on June 27, 1993, in an exchange of fire with members of Germany’s special operations unit, the GSG-9, at the Bad Kleinen train station. According to witnesses Grams was shot execution-style while lying prone on the train tracks. Two GSG-9 agents were also shot, one of them, Michael Newrzella, fatally. RAF member Birgit Hogefeld was arrested and would spend eighteen years in prison. On April 10, 1992, the RAF had de-escalated its conflict with the state, unilaterally announcing that it would no longer carry out the kind of “lethal actions targeting the leaders of the state and economy” that had been its hallmark in the 1980s.
[3] On February 26, 2024, the apartment building Daniela Klette had been living in was raided, with news reports about dangerous weapons on the premises necessitating the evacuation of the residents. Realizing the police were outside her door, she managed to send a quick text message before disposing of her phone’s sim card; Burkhard was long gone before police raided the alternative caravan park he had been living in and working at as a caretaker.
[4] LKA: Landeskriminalamt (State Criminal Office), the main police force in each German state. Daniela was initially charged with participation in thirteen robberies committed between 1999 and 2016 and “attempted murder” (a cash transport vehicle driver was allegedly shot at). A separate trial is being prepared for her based on charges stemming from RAF actions prior to the group’s dissolution.
[5] Aktenzeichen XY is a popular German TV show focusing on unsolved crimes.
[6] Größter anzunehmender Unfall: worst case scenario.
[7] The Bundesnachrichtendienst is Germany’s federal intelligence service.
[8] A JVA is a Justizvollzugsanstalt (high-security prison). Historically, visits with prisoners from the RAF often took place under difficult conditions, including with “observers” from various police agencies present during visits.