Red Army Faction fugitive Daniela Klette appears in German court

KARLSRUHE, Germany (Reuters) -Daniela Klette, a member of Germany’s Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group who was arrested last week after three decades on the run, made an initial appearance on Thursday at the country’s Federal Court of Justice, the Attorney General’s office said.

Klette, 65, a member of the so-called third generation of the RAF, had long been sought alongside two other members of the group, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub. She was arrested in a Berlin apartment on the evening of Feb. 26.

A statement from the Attorney General’s office, citing the arrest warrant, said Klette took part in three RAF attacks between February 1990 and March 1993.

Founded by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof among others, the far-left RAF’s first generation emerged from German student protests of the late 1960s.

The group took hostages and murdered more than 30 people, including public officials, police officers, business leaders and U.S. soldiers. The group formally disbanded in 1998 with some members slipping back into ordinary lives.

Klette faces two separate legal cases.

One, in the state of Lower Saxony in northern Germany, relates to robberies, including armed robbery, and attempted murder, to finance her livelihood after she went underground.

The Attorney General’s arrest warrant centres on suspected RAF crimes.

These include an attempted explosion in an administrative building of Deutsche Bank in which three security staff were present, a gun attack on the U.S. embassy in Bonn with at least 10 people present, and an explosives attack on a newly built, unoccupied prison, the Attorney General’s office said in a statement.

Police are still searching for two other members of RAF’s third generation, Staub and Garweg. Both men face charges of armed robbery and at least one attempted murder committed between 1999 and 2016, the same charges Klette faces in Lower Saxony.

(Reporting by Timm Reichert, Max Schwarz and Tilman BlasshoferWriting by Nette NöstlingerEditing by Frances Kerry and Ros Russell)