麻豆约拍

Sue MacGregor meets former members of the Baader-Meinhof gang that terrorised West Germany with bombings, assassinations and hijackings in the 1970s.

In 1977, the Baader-Meinhof gang unleashed a wave of horror and tragedy which is now remembered as the "the German Autumn of terror". In April of that year, chief federal prosecutor Seigfried Buback and his bodyguard were killed by motorcycle gunmen. In July, banker Jurgen Ponto was fatally wounded in a bungled kidnap attempt which was meant to spring the leaders of the gang from prison. Then, in September, the powerful industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer was abducted and murdered.

When the government still refused to meet the gang's demands to release their members from prison, they persuaded Palestinian militants to hijack a Lufthansa jet. But when it landed in Mogadishu in Somalia it was stormed by German special forces and the passengers freed. The next morning, three of the group's founding members were found dead in their cells.

Rooted in the student protest movement of the late 1960s, the story of the group began in May 1970 with the freeing of Andreas Baader (imprisoned for planting fire bombs in protest against the Vietnam war) by the popular television journalist Ulrike Meinhof and others. They spent the years that followed stealing cars and robbing banks before being finally captured in 1972. Their prolonged trial began in 1975 and lasted for almost two years, in the course of which Ulrike Meinhof committed suicide. The other leaders of the group were convicted and received life sentences.

Among those joining Sue around the table to look back on the dramatic events are gang member Peter Jurgen Boock, former West German counter-terrorism chief Rainer Hofmeyer, radical lawyer Kurt Groenewold, and Stephan Aust, the journalist who covered the Baader-Meinhof story throughout the seventies.

Producer: Emily Williams
Series Producer: David Prest

A Whistledown production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.