Arson attack in Rosbach

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The arson attack in Rosbach was a terrorist attack that was carried out on March 1, 1988 by sympathizers of the underground organization Action Directe on the Renault agricultural machinery branch in Rosbach (Hesse). The perpetrators were sentenced to six or five years' imprisonment.

prehistory

On the day of the incident, several imprisoned members of the French terrorist organization "action directe" had been on hunger strike for 90 days. On February 16, unknown perpetrators carried out an arson attack on the Deutsche Bank training center in Kronberg , which injured two people and caused millions of euros in damage. A letter of responsibility was sent out in response to this attack , in which it was stated: "The attack on the Deutsche Bank training center supports the demands of the prisoners of Action Directe, who have been on hunger strike since December 1, 1987 ...".

The German subsidiary of the French Renault-Landtechnik had its central spare parts warehouse in Rosbach. Sales and customer service were also coordinated from there.

The fact

A police patrol discovered flames in the office building around 1:30 a.m. and alerted the fire department. The first fire engines arrived a few minutes later. The fire was extinguished at around 2:30 a.m.

The fire destroyed the rooms in the lower part of the office wing. The rooms above and the IT system were also largely damaged. The adjacent machine hall, which was protected by a fire protection wall, got so hot that several tractor tires melted there. The damage was estimated by Udo Harald Busch, managing director of the German Renault branch, at 500,000 DM (in today's purchasing power 455,235 euros) to one million DM. All sales documents were destroyed.

The police found petrol cans in the burned-out building. A hole in the metal fence and footprints in the snow indicated the perpetrators. The police followed the tracks in the fresh snow into the Beinhardswald near Rosbach and arrested three men, Heinrich J., Bernhard Daniel R. and Max D., about ten kilometers away around 4 a.m. Heinrich J. was one of the first members of the Baader-Meinhof group . In 1973 he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for attempted police murder by the Berlin Higher Regional Court.

process

On January 24, 1989, the criminal trial began before the 5th criminal division of the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court . The indictment under Federal Prosecutor Leo Kouril accused the accused of membership and support of a terrorist organization as well as arson . Membership and support of the Action Directe terrorist group itself was not a criminal offense because it was a foreign organization and had committed its crimes abroad. The prosecutor's complaint related to leaflets on which a group "For Communism" had advocated the attack. The prosecution saw this as an indication that a new terrorist group with that name had formed.

The defense followed the pattern of other terrorist trials in Germany. The defendants only issued political statements in which they criticized the conditions of their detention, called for the amalgamation of the "political prisoners" and committed themselves to the "revolutionary struggle". The defense lawyers submitted a large number of procedural motions and requested that the judges' bias be established.

The verdict was pronounced on June 22, 1989. The court did not follow the prosecution's arguments regarding the formation of a terrorist group and acquitted the defendants on this point. The court, however, considered the allegation of arson to be proven and sentenced Heinrich J. to six years and Bernhard Daniel R. and Max D. to five years each.

swell

  • The investigators followed the tracks in the snow ; in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 25, 1989, p. 33
  • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 2, 1988, p. 43
  • Highly reprehensible ; in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 23, 1989, p. 53