Former RAF member Daniela Klette sentenced to 13 years for robberies

Daniela Klette was sentenced to 13 years in prison on 27 May 2026 after a court in Verden found the 67-year-old guilty of six counts of particularly serious robbery, along with related arms and extortion offenses. The verdict closed one phase of a case that began with her arrest in Berlin in February 2024, when investigators said she had been living under a false identity for more than 30 years.

Klette was a member of the Red Army Faction, the far-left Baader-Meinhof group that carried out killings, bombings and kidnappings mainly in the 1970s and 1980s before being formally dissolved in 1998. Prosecutors said the robberies at the center of the trial were carried out between 1999 and 2016 and brought in about 2.4 million to 2.7 million euros. Authorities said Klette mainly served as the getaway driver, while male accomplices carried assault rifles and, in some heists, she was said to have carried a realistic-looking dummy bazooka.

The evidence recovered after her arrest helped turn the case into more than a simple robbery prosecution. Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, explosives, large amounts of cash and forged identity papers in her Berlin flat, underscoring how long she had managed to remain in plain sight. Her trial began in March 2025 in Celle, northern Germany, before moving through high-security proceedings in Verden an der Aller. A court dismissed an attempted-murder charge tied to a 2015 robbery, but the robbery convictions and the 13-year sentence marked the most significant legal reckoning yet for one of the last publicly known RAF fugitives.

The sentence also revived a broader question that has shadowed German justice for decades: whether the state can still deliver accountability when political violence stretches across generations. Separate proceedings continue over alleged RAF-linked attacks in the early 1990s, including a planned attack on Deutsche Bank offices in 1990, machine-gun fire on the US embassy in Bonn in 1991 and the Weiterstadt prison bombing in 1993. Supporters in the courtroom shouted “Free Daniela!” during the trial, while two alleged accomplices, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub, remain in hiding. For Germany, Klette’s conviction is a reminder that time can delay justice, but not necessarily erase it.