Hans-Joachim Klein (terrorist)

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Hans-Joachim Klein (born December 21, 1947 in Frankfurt am Main ) is a former terrorist of the Revolutionary Cells (RZ). In 1975 he participated in the OPEC hostage-taking . He then renounced terrorism and lived underground in France until he was arrested in 1998 . In 2001 he was sentenced to nine years imprisonment for three murders and hostage-taking and was released on parole in 2003.

Life

Some years after their prison camp in Ravensbruck concentration camp his mother committed suicide in April 1948 suicide . Hans-Joachim Klein was five months old at the time. He then grew up with a foster mother until the father took him to live with him after remarrying. The relationship with his father, a police officer, was marked by conflict and violence against the boy. After an apprenticeship as a car mechanic and an eight-month stay in a youth prison because of a street robbery, Klein joined the left-wing radical milieu in Frankfurt's Westend and was active in the cleaning group . He later got involved in the Red Aid for imprisoned members of the Red Army Faction (RAF). When Jean-Paul Sartre came to Stuttgart-Stammheim in 1974 to visit Andreas Baader , Klein picked him up at Frankfurt Airport and chauffeured him to the prison. In 1974 he was also recruited for the Revolutionary Cells. In 1975, Klein took part in the OPEC hostage-taking in Vienna together with Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann and the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez ("Carlos") wanted worldwide .

After participating in the attack on the OPEC Conference, in which Hans-Joachim Klein mittäterschaftlich three people killed (.. And a policeman Anton Tichler), Klein broke - with support from the Frankfurt left scene - with terrorism and then dived into France under . In 1977 he sent a gun to the mirror from underground and warned of allegedly planned anti-Semitic assassinations by the RZ. The following year he reported in an interview with Der Spiegel about further plans for assassination and kidnapping and justified this with wanting to dissuade others from terrorism. In 1979 his book Return to Humanity was published. In 1980 he told Spiegel in an interview that Susanne Albrecht and Peter-Jürgen Boock had left the RAF. Both former comrades in arms and criminal investigators and courts subsequently assessed various submissions and testimonies of Klein as untruthful, implausible or contradicting.

During his time in illegality, he married a French woman with whom he has two children. After she left him, he made two suicide attempts. In 1997 he made the decision to face the authorities and had his friend and supporter Daniel Cohn-Bendit put him in touch with a lawyer in order to prepare for this step, which, however, never happened.

In 1998, after almost 25 years in the underground, Klein was arrested by two officers of the French police accompanied by two BKA officers in his local pub in France. The police had determined his whereabouts by monitoring the phones of a journalist from Stern who had contact with Klein. A mobile phone connection and two landline connections of the journalist and her husband had been monitored by order of a German district court from February to September 1998, and the resulting connection data led the police to Klein's hiding place. The journalist later sued the Federal Constitutional Court against this surveillance, but her complaint was dismissed in 2003.

Klein was tried in Germany in 2000. In addition to Cohn-Bendit, Joschka Fischer and Matthias Beltz also appeared as exonerating witnesses as other former Frankfurt companions . Due to the leniency program , Klein was sentenced on February 15, 2001 to nine years' imprisonment instead of life imprisonment for triple committed murder, attempted murder and hostage-taking. The court rated his public renunciation of terrorism and his involvement in the investigation of criminal offenses positively. The co-defendant Rudolf Schindler was acquitted after Klein's incriminating statements - the basis of his classification as a key witness - were partially refuted during the trial. The presiding judge expressed the assessment that although Klein's decisive statements were not credible, he had not deliberately told the untruth. In 2003, the remainder of his sentence was suspended and Klein was released from prison. The last months of his suspended sentence were released in March 2009 by the Hessian Ministry of Justice by order of a pardon .

In 2013 he testified as a witness in the trial against former data center members Christian Gauger and Sonja Suder . The murder charges against Suder in connection with the OPEC hostage-taking were based on Klein's allegations. However, this was dropped in the course of the trial after Klein's testimony had shown indissoluble contradictions in the view of the court.

Klein lives in Normandy , France, and is still friends with Cohn-Bendit.

Background of Klein's mother's imprisonment in the concentration camp

For a long time it was assumed that Hans-Joachim Klein's mother was of Jewish origin and therefore had to spend 18 months as a prisoner in the Ravensbrück concentration camp during the National Socialist rule in Germany. According to Klein's research, however, she was more likely to be imprisoned there for so-called racial disgrace and thus Klein, contrary to his own assumption, which he had for decades, was also not of Jewish descent.

Movie

In 2005, the Dutch filmmaker Alexander Oey shot the documentary My Life as a Terrorist: The Story of Hans-Joachim Klein, which was broadcast on August 15, 2006 by ARD under the title Ein deutscher Terrorist - Die Geschichte des Hans-Joachim Klein and in 2007 as DVD appeared.

In the 2010 French film Carlos - The Jackal , he is portrayed by Christoph Bach .

Publications

literature

  • Uwe Backes : Terrorist Biographies: Hans-Joachim Klein . In: Ders .: Leaden years. Baader-Meinhof and afterwards (= series Extremism and Democracy . Vol. 1). Straube, Erlangen a. a. 1991, ISBN 3-927491-36-5 , p. 149 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Günter Riederer: 1974: Visit of the old man. In: Friday , December 10, 2014.
  2. ↑ I've done enough . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1977, pp. 33-34 ( online ).
  3. ↑ "I believed in it madly". In: Spiegel of August 7, 1978, accessed July 26, 2016
  4. ^ Spiegel conversation: Spied on the Pope for a month . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1978, p. 70-82 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Hans-Joachim Klein: I'm a stinky Frankfurt type . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1978, p. 80-81 ( online ).
  6. ↑ Put your weapon down and into the bushes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1980, pp. 135-138 ( online ).
  7. ^ Gisela Friedrichsen: Trial of Opec attack: old revolutionaries in court. In: Spiegel Online of September 21, 2012, accessed on July 26, 2016
  8. ↑ Heide Platen: Who is actually Max here? In: taz.de of November 22, 2000, accessed on July 26, 2016
  9. ↑ Gisela Friedrichsen : Nobody puts me under pressure . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 2000, pp. 64-68 ( online ).
  10. ↑ Gisela Friedrichsen: Criminal Justice: "With all love for subversion". In: Spiegel from January 22, 2001, accessed on July 26, 2016
  11. ↑ a b Jutta Witte: Cohn-Bendit's memories of the ex-terrorist Klein: "He was ashamed as a child". In: Hamburger Abendblatt from November 24, 2000, accessed on July 26, 2016
  12. ↑ Verdict: Reporters with Limits. In: Stern Online of March 12, 2003, accessed August 17, 2015
  13. ↑ Judgment of March 12, 2003 - 1 BvR 330/96, website of the Federal Constitutional Court, accessed on August 17, 2015
  14. ↑ a b Ex-terrorist convicted of OPEC attack: Klein has to be imprisoned for nine years. In: RZ Online from February 15, 2001, accessed on July 26, 2016
  15. ^ Ex-terrorist: Hesse pardons Hans-Joachim Klein . In: Spiegel Online . March 7, 2009
  16. ^ Thomas Kirn: Opec assassin Hans-Joachim Klein: A traitor for the sympathizers . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . February 8, 2013
  17. ↑ Suder's acquittal. In: Frankfurter Rundschau of November 12, 2013, accessed on July 26, 2016
  18. ^ Films Transit International Inc .: My Life as a Terrorist: The Story of Hans-Joachim Klein ( Memento from July 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ Nils Minkmar : Left-wing terrorism: Not all were citizens' children . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . October 20, 2007
personal data
SURNAME Klein, Hans-Joachim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German terrorist of the revolutionary cells
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main