Knut Folkerts

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Knut Folkerts (approx. 1977)

Knut Detlef Folkerts (born January 1, 1952 in Singen ) is a former member of the terrorist organization Red Army Fraktion (RAF). In 1977 he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in the Netherlands for murder , later in Germany to two times life imprisonment for the murder of the Federal Public Prosecutor Siegfried Buback and released in 1995.

Life

RAF time and arrest

Knut Folkerts was arrested and sentenced for an attack on an arms shop in Frankfurt am Main , which he presumably committed on July 1, 1977 with Willy Peter Stoll . In a 2007 interview, however, he denied having been involved.

On September 22, 1977, Folkerts and Elisabeth von Dyck wanted to return a Dutch car to a car rental company in Utrecht that had been rented twelve days earlier by Sigrid Sternebeck in connection with the Schleyer kidnapping . The area around them was observed by the Dutch police. While attempting to arrest Folkerts shot and killed the police officer Arie Kranenburg (born June 10, 1931) and seriously injured another. Folkerts was arrested later. Von Dyck, who was initially falsely identified as Brigitte Mohnhaupt and who had got out of the rental car near the later crime scene, was able to escape.

In the meantime, Folkerts claimed that the German Federal Criminal Police Office had made him an offer at the time: a new identity in the USA and one million D-Marks if he revealed the whereabouts of Hanns Martin Schleyer . This offer was linked to the threat of killing him if he did not respond.

Murder trial

Knut Folkerts was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in Utrecht for the murder of the police officer and served the sentence for about a year in the Netherlands. After extradition to the Federal Republic of Germany, the trial in Stuttgart followed in 1980 : Folkerts was tried on July 31, 1980 for the murder of the Federal Public Prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his two companions, for attempted murder and the formation of a terrorist group, and for robbery on an arms shop in Frankfurt am Main Sentenced to twice life imprisonment.

He was released early on October 16, 1995. Former RAF members later testified that Folkerts was in Amsterdam at the time of the crime and was therefore not directly involved in the action. Under German law, however, a conviction for collective murder is still possible if Folkerts supported the murder from a distance. In May 2007, Folkerts stated in an interview with Der Spiegel that he knew about the planning of the assassination attempt on Siegfried Buback by the Red Army faction, but that he was not directly involved. In 2007, a lawyer expressed doubts about the testimony of witnesses who saw Folkerts near the Buback crime scene.

Serving sentence in the Netherlands

Memorial plaque for the Dutch policeman Arie Kranenburg in Utrecht, who was shot by Folkerts .

On August 5, 2005, the Dutch government demanded - not least at the urging of Joke Kranenburg, the widow of the shot policeman - that he serve the remainder of his sentence for the Utrecht murder. To this end, they sent a request for legal assistance to the German judiciary. The aim of this request is that Folkerts should serve the prison sentence from the proceedings in Utrecht in the Federal Republic. This would mean that the Dutch judiciary would circumvent the recent case law of the Federal Constitutional Court of July 2005 on the European arrest warrant , which rejected the extradition of German citizens. On May 31, 2006, a court in The Hague ordered Folkerts to serve a 20-year prison term in the Netherlands. The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg has declared the request for assistance of the Netherlands 16 June 2011 for reasons of proportionality inadmissible.

On December 28, 2007, the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice ordered the former RAF members Knut Folkerts, Christian Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt to testify on the murder of Siegfried Buback in 1977. Folkerts' attorney said that he would still not testify. On August 7, 2008, the Federal Court of Justice overturned the rulings on the order of preliminary detention.

literature

Web links

Commons : Knut Folkerts  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Judgment against RAF terrorist Knut Folkert's "Systematic Error" on spiegel.de
  2. ↑ The verdict against Knut Folkerts on sueddeutsche.de
  3. ↑ a b Spiegel Online: "Ex-terrorists exonerate Klar and Folkerts as Buback murderers" on spiegel.de
  4. ↑ spiegel.de processes: Pak'm, in: Der Spiegel from December 12, 1977, accessed on March 14, 2017
  5. ^ Film The RAF , Stefan Aust and Helmar Büchel
  6. ↑ Interview with Knut Folkerts in: Der Spiegel 20/2007, page 60.
  7. ^ Lawyer in Spiegel Discussion: "It is conceivable that all witnesses were wrong at the time" (August 20, 2007)
  8. ↑ Enforcement of sentences based on a Dutch criminal judgment against former RAF members Folkert is not permitted ( Memento of the original from August 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on justiz.hamburg.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / justiz.hamburg.de
  9. ↑ Lawyers do not expect any statements from Beugehaft on welt.de (January 5, 2008)
  10. ↑ Press release of the Federal Court of Justice on juris.bundesgerichtshof.de (August 15, 2008)
personal data
SURNAME Folkerts, Knut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Folkerts, Knut Detlef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German terrorist of the Red Army faction
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH To sing