Ghosts from the Past

Bomb attacks, kidnappings, shootings, hijackings, radical ideology and assassinations -- the words are almost commonplace in today's world plagued by global Islamist terrorism. But they were also the hallmarks of the campaign of militant violence unleashed by Germany's homegrown terrorists of the 1970s and 1980s.

Born out of the student protest movement of the late 1960s, the radical leftist Red Army Faction (RAF) group kidnapped and killed prominent establishment figures in Germany in the name of class struggle and left-wing idealism. The brutal campaign and the West German state's heavy-handed response polarized the postwar generation.

Now, nearly 30 years after the so-called "German Autumn" of 1977, which ended with the suicides of the RAF's core leadership and the brutal kidnapping and murder of the president of the German Employers' Association, Hanns Martin Schleyer, the turbulent period in German history may be heading towards the final chapter.

A presidential pardon

German President Horst Köhler has indicated that he may grant clemency to Christian Klar, one of the four remaining RAF members still being held in prison. A spokesman from the German president's office confirmed that the president had requested the German Justice Ministry for a statement on the case.

Klar, now 54, was convicted in 1985 during the infamous Stammheim trial in Stuttgart for nine killings and 11 counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Like much of the RAF rank, Klar came from the wealthy southwest, from a middle class family in Freiburg. Angered by the punishing prison conditions meted out to the group's inmates, Klar joined the guerrilla group in 1976 when he went to Karlsruhe to study.

"Klar was a classic example of the second RAF generation from the Karlsruhe scene that was exclusively organized against the city's main court and several other state institutions," said Gerd Könen, a Frankfurt-based historian who has written several books about the RAF.

Karlsruhe is home to Germany's highest court.

"He was obviously a central figure who played a role in a series of key assassinations," Könen said.

Klar was found to be involved in the assassination of Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback, the killing of banker Jürgen Ponto and the kidnapping of Schleyer.

"A ghost from the past"

Klar, who applied for clemency after a television interview, has said he's ready to express regret to the relatives of RAF victims for whom the consequences of the war, which German author Heinrich Böll famously called "six against 60 million," were all too real. The RAF killed more than 30 people during their armed struggle against the West German state.

The former top terrorist however stands a good chance of being released earlier than 2008 -- the earliest date by which he can be freed according to his verdict.

Since reunification in 1990, Germany's presidents have set a precedent of pardoning former RAF killers. Eight have been released from prison ever since, the last by Köhler's predecessor, Johannes Rau.

Willi Winkler, a journalist and writer who is working on a book about the RAF, said for many in Germany, the radical left-wing group was already history.

"Christian Klar is a ghost from the past," he said. "The RAF are leftovers of an ideological turmoil of the 1960s. Nobody talks about this anymore, particularly after Sept. 11. The threat of Islamist terrorism today is quite different."

"Keeper of the flame"

In Europe, left-wing terrorism erupted in Italy and Greece in the 1970s too, but it lasted the longest in Germany -- well into the early 1990s. It may no longer pose a threat anymore, but a presidential pardon for Klar would still draw attention to the remaining three RAF prisoners -- all of them women who have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Among them, 57-year-old Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who has spent the past 28 years behind bars, is the most enigmatic. The head of the Schleyer kidnapping and killing operation in 1977, which was meant to raise pressure on the German government to release RAF prisoners, Mohnhaupt has cloaked herself in silence ever since her conviction. Unlike other former RAF members, she has refused to talk to journalists or apply for clemency.

"Mohnhaupt is a hardliner and she can never be pardoned because she has never shown any signs of contrition and has refused to talk to the authorities," Winkler said. "In a way, she's the real keeper of the flame."

"A sense of the unresolved"

It's no secret that the four remaining RAF prisoners were punished particularly severely for refusing to cooperate with the authorities and divulge information. German authorities have failed to solve the last five murders which the RAF owned up to. This has placed a particular "burden" on the issue, Könen said.

Thus, Germans still don't know who killed industrialist Ernst Zimmermann, Siemens executive Karl-Heinz Beckurts, top foreign ministry official Gerold von Braunmühl, Deutsche Bank chief Alfred Herrhausen or Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, leader of the post-reunification government-owned Treuhand organization which was responsible for privatizing East German companies.

"There's this sense of the unresolved about the whole thing, even in a purely criminal and legal sense," said Könen, adding that pardoning Klar would also bring Germany closer to finally closing the book on a painful past.

"That's why it's all the more important that we finally draw a line under it," he said. "It would be much more productive for the society to close this matter once and for all."