Karl-Heinz Ruhland

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Karl-Heinz Ruhland (born March 1938 in Berlin ) is a former member of the terrorist organization Red Army Fraktion (RAF). He is assigned to the first generation, became a key witness and was imprisoned from 1970 to 1974.

Life

In 1970, Karl-Heinz Ruhland worked as a mechanic for the used car dealer Eric Grusdat in Berlin . He helped Grusdat prepare vehicles for the RAF. In the summer of 1970 he received military training in Jordan with other RAF members. In October 1970 he became an active member of the RAF. Ruhland drove to Ulrike Meinhof in Hanover , rented conspiratorial apartments, was involved in several bank robberies and a break-in in an arms shop. In November 1970, Ruhland, together with Ulrike Meinhof and Heinrich "Ali" Jansen, broke into the town hall in Neustadt am Rübenberge and a week later the town hall in Langgöns in the district of Gießen in order to steal passports and stamps. In the break-in in Langgöns, 166 blank ID cards, eyelet pliers for passport photos and the rivets that go with them are stolen from the mayor's office. The first generation of the RAF will benefit from this booty to the end. On December 20, 1970, he and RAF members Heinrich Jansen and Beate Sturm ran into a vehicle inspection in Oberhausen . Ruhland accompanied the police officers to their emergency vehicle and handed them a loaded and unlocked pistol without attempting to evade arrest. Jansen and Sturm managed to escape.

Ruhland was at times heavily in debt and never moved into the inner circle of the RAF. He only knew many group members by their aliases . Some former RAF members later stated that he had entered into a love affair with Ulrike Meinhof in 1970. After his arrest, Ruhland was the first RAF member to testify. He gave extensive information and gave an interview in the magazine Der Spiegel . In the trial against Horst Mahler because of the Baader exemption , he appeared as a key witness and betrayed RAF bases in Berlin , Lower Saxony , Cologne and Frankfurt am Main . In March 1972 he was sentenced to four and a half years' imprisonment for bank robbery and pardoned in 1974 because of his statements. The BKA brokered a Ruhland passport, a gun license and a pistol, as well as a wall around his property, bulletproof glass and a thousand marks a month.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stefan Aust, The Baader Meinhof Complex, new edition 2017, Hamburg, page 243.
  2. ↑ I would never testify again . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1976 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Today I serve with the pure truth . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1979 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Ruhland, Karl-Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German terrorist, member of the Red Army faction
DATE OF BIRTH March 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin