Recent Dispatches from Comrades in Germany, 2024–25
Daniela Klette and Martin (Burkhard Garweg) are accused of being former members of the Red Army Faction and of having carried out a number of successful expropriations in the decad es since the RAF disbanded in 1998. Daniela was captured in 2024 in Berlin, while Martin remains at large, despite the re-energized manhunt targeting him. This zine contains a short overview of their situation and a letter from prison by Daniela that was read by actor Rolf Becker at the thirtieth International Rosa Luxemburg Congress in Berlin, on January 11, 2025. It also includes a letter by Martin that late last year was delivered to the taz, a progressive newspaper with its origins in the 1970s radical left, by an attorney acting on his behalf. These texts can be viewed on the German Guerilla site: Greetings from the Underground, Martin (Burkhard Garweg) Letter from Daniela to the Rosa Luxemburg Congress These texts can be downloaded as a pamphlet here: http://germanguerilla.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/dispatches-booklet.pdf More information: By the time Daniela Klette, Burkhard Garweg, and Volker Staub ended up on wanted posters, the group they were accused of belonging to—the Red Army Faction—had been in existence for over two decades. The RAF was a clandestine organization that had waged armed struggle throughout the 1970s and 1980s in order to create an anti-imperialist pole of resistance in West Germany, as the country was known at the time. Several members died in the course of the struggle, and dozens of guerrillas and their supporters served lengthy prison terms. It is alleged that Daniela, Burkhard, and Volker were active in the group in its final years, the 1990s. Daniela was captured in 2024, and Burkhard is now the focus of a newly energized manhunt. We have produced this document to inform comrades in the English-speaking world of their situation and politics. First some context: The years in which Daniela, Burkhard, and Volker are alleged to have been active were the years in which the RAF de-escalated its conflict with the state, unilaterally announcing, on April 10, 1992, that it would no longer carry out the kind of “lethal actions targeting the leaders of the state and economy” that had become its hallmark in the 1980s. In 1991, the RAF strafed the United States embassy with submachinegun fire in protest against the first Iraq war; in 1993, it bombed a new prison just as construction was nearing completion, doing over $80 million in damage and delaying its opening by four years. In 1994, the state sprang a trap, using an infiltrator it had managed to position close to the RAF (a first in the group’s history): Wolfgang Grams was killed—according to eyewitnesses he was shot dead after being immobilized—and Birgit Hogefeld was captured (she received three life sentences and was released from prison in 2011). The RAF would never carry out another action. Following a series of acrimonious public debates with the broader far left, the group fell silent, only to release a document announcing its dissolution in 1998. The 1990s were a decade of rapid change, as the world was twisted into a new shape by the force of the vacuum left when the Soviet Union imploded. This was perhaps nowhere more true than in the new Germany that emerged from the combination of two states that had symbolized the standoff between imperialism and “real existing socialism” since the end of World War II: the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. West Germany and East Germany: the latter being absorbed into the former a year after the Berlin Wall was torn down by angry protesters on November 9, 1989, the slogan “we are the people” melting into “we are one people.” As well as German reunification (long thought impossible by all but the far right), the 1990s witnessed the first crest of a new grassroots racism emboldened by these changed circumstances, heightened violence against migrants, the NATO war on Yugoslavia, and the start of a new cycle of imperialist wars against the peoples of the Middle East—and, of course, the introduction of the Internet and the beginnings of what would be the complete transformation of everyday culture, including the nature of political organizing. Just as today, in 2025, we see a new sequence of struggles and challenges taking form, we can also recognize that our present context is very much the culmination of dynamics set in motion in that first decade of what one court jester tried to pass off as the “end of history.” It is in our current context—global contradictions surpassing the bounds of what can be managed in the old ways, the rise of the AfD in Germany and of the far right internationally, a Zionist genocide in the Middle East, war in Europe, climate disaster—that Daniela Klette has been captured. In recent years, there were fresh news reports and wanted posters, as police claimed they had found DNA from the alleged RAF fugitives at the scene of various robberies in the 2000s and 2010s. Indeed, in the media/police narrative, the three were linked to a whole series of successful expropriations, several of which involved threatening armored cars with a rocket launcher before making off with the haul. All kinds of unsolved robberies were being blamed on what one wit dubbed the “Red Army Faction pensioners.” When Daniela was captured, however, it was not the result of a robbery gone wrong. Rather, in 2023, an ARD television podcast decided that tracking her down might be good for ratings. They consulted with Michael Colborne, a Canadian journalist from Bellingcat, a website run by digital investigators. “I strongly recommend that you follow this lead,” Colborne told them after feeding Daniela’s old picture from the police wanted poster into the PimEyes face search engine. They had identified Daniela, but were unable to find her, producing an episode framed as a mysterious “failed” investigation. And so it came to pass that some wannabe sleuths who were barely out of diapers when the RAF carried out its last action played a key role in capturing the woman accused of being one of its final members. They produced their show, and a few months later the police, allegedly responding to an anonymous tip as to her whereabouts, moved in to carry out their arrest. Daniela Klette was captured on February 26, 2024. The apartment building she 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. For the first two months, Daniela was held in a cell constantly under video surveillance and was kept isolated from other prisoners. She 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. Dozens of people have been subpoenaed to appear as witnesses and provide information about the whereabouts of Burkhard and Volker, threatened with fines and coercive detention if they do not comply. This includes a number of former RAF members, people accused of being friends with former RAF members, and former residents of the Hafenstrasse squat in Hamburg in the 1980s, when Burkhard had lived there. Some of those who have refused to answer questions have been fined 500 euros. The state has targeted a number of former RAF members since the group disbanded, trying to dredge up new charges for actions the group carried out when it was active, often actions that other people have already served years or decades in prison for. The fact that the RAF was active for so long and was never defeated but instead chose to disband, and that most former members have refused to recant or to provide information, sets a precedent that is dangerous to those in power. It is an example they have long hoped to snuff out. Similar to the prosecution of elderly former militants in other countries for actions long past, the goal is to stamp out the memory of a certain kind of resistance, lest it become a factor once again as contradictions unfold and the capitalist edifice crumbles ever more. Solidarity with Daniela Klette! Daniela reads English, Spanish, Portuguese, and, of course, German. Mail takes about a month to reach her and cannot include any enclosures such as flyers or newspaper articles. You can write to her at: Daniela KletteJVA für FrauenAn der Propstei 1049377 VechtaGermany
