Siegfried Haag

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Siegfried Gottlieb Haag (born March 15, 1945 in Aurich ) is a former German terrorist of the Red Army Faction (RAF). The lawyer of Andreas Baader was arrested a leader of the second generation of the RAF from 1976 to 1987th

Life

Attorney for Andreas Baader and Holger Meins

After the arrest of the top of the first generation of the RAF in 1972, the Heidelberg lawyer Siegfried Haag took over the mandate for Andreas Baader as one of 15 defenders . In 1974 he briefly defended Holger Meins . Haag ran a law firm together with the lawyer Eberhard Becker, who later also became a member of the RAF , and acted as a courier between the prisons during the hunger strike of the RAF prisoners. Many RAF members reported that he put pressure on them to continue the hunger strikes and "carried out all of Baader's instructions without hesitation."

From the start, Haag sympathized with the terrorists and recruited new members through his law firm in Heidelberg. The key witness , the RAF terrorist Volker Speitel , reported that Haag had recruited him in 1974 with special references to the death of Holger Mine . The goal was to free the prisoners, reports Speitel. For this purpose, Haag wanted to "build up an illegal structure [...] since 1972 in order to later start a commando company," said Speitel.

In addition to Speitel, Haag recruited RAF members Lutz Taufer , Ulrich Wessel , Hanna Krabbe and Bernhard Rössner until 1974 . In 1975 they occupied the German embassy in Stockholm . Haag did not personally take part in the hostage-taking, but was instrumental in planning it. However, there was still no evidence of this. Haag was briefly arrested in April 1975, but was released again. After that, Haag went underground.

Haag / Mayer gang

Until mid-1976, Haag recruited additional members. In addition to Haag and Roland Mayer, at least eleven people belonged to the group known as the Haag / Mayer gang . Among others, these were: Adelheid Schulz , Uwe and Knut Folkerts , Günter Sonnenberg , Sabine Schmitz , Christian Klar , the couple Waltraud and Peter-Jürgen Boock and by the Lorenz kidnapping freely pressed Verena Becker . In addition, according to the investigators' findings, there were around 25 supporters. Most of the group members had taken part in the occupation of Amnesty International's Hamburg office two years earlier . By 1977 the group built up a logistics system consisting of conspiratorial apartments, weapons, money and vehicles and planned the attacks and kidnappings of the German autumn . In connection with this, the group committed several bank robberies.

On November 30, 1976 Siegfried Haag was arrested together with RAF member Roland Mayer. Haag carried a fully loaded pistol in his waistband. The police found explosive documents in the car in which they were both arrested. The Haag / Mayer papers revealed attack plans of the second generation of the RAF and contained, among other things, various hidden references to plans for the murder of Siegfried Buback and the kidnappings of Hanns Martin Schleyer and Jürgen Ponto . However, these clues were only deciphered in retrospect and the RAF's Offensive 77 nevertheless took place. This led to the deaths of Buback and Ponto and with the beginning of the Schleyer kidnapping for the German autumn, at the end of which Schleyer was also murdered.

After Haag's arrest, his conversations with his lawyers were illegally wiretapped and recorded in the Stuttgart- Stammheim correctional facility . This led to the Stammheim wiretapping affair . After the wiretapping became public, the Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Karl Schiess and Justice Minister Traugott Bender appealed to a justifying state of emergency . One had to assume that lawyers and prisoners would immediately plan actions to free the prisoners. The Stuttgart Public Prosecutor's office then stated that they had not known anything about the wiretapping and that it had been carried out by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution . As a result, the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court prohibited further eavesdropping on the attorney's talks.

In 1979, Haag was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court for complicity in murder and other offenses. While in custody, Haag broke away from the RAF. After a little over ten years, the remainder of his sentence was suspended in February 1987 because Haag was seriously ill. Even before his release, he said in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau :

“The actions of the RAF turned out to be wrong. I joined the group with the conviction that let's see if it works. It took all these years to come to the conclusion that I have to give up this policy, it is wrong. "

From 1987

In the trial against Verena Becker , Siegfried Haag was supposed to testify as a witness, but invoked his right to refuse to give evidence . This was denied on the grounds that he was no longer threatened with persecution because of his involvement in the RAF terrorist attacks. The Stuttgart Higher Regional Court therefore ordered joint detention on March 31, 2011 . This order was repealed by the Federal Court of Justice, which did not unequivocally rule out the possibility of criminal prosecution and therefore assumed a right to refuse to testify.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Der Spiegel: “Actually everyone should be suspicious” . In: Jakob Augstein (Ed.): Der Spiegel . tape 38 , September 12, 1977 ( spiegel.de [accessed January 7, 2019]).
  2. ↑ [1] Wanted poster from 1976 at n24.de, accessed on January 19, 2016.
  3. ^ Dpa: RAF trial: judges impose criminal detention against ex-terrorists. In: Zeit Online. March 31, 2011, accessed July 25, 2014 .
  4. ^ RAF trial: court imposes prison sentence on ex-terrorists. In: Spiegel Online . March 31, 2011, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  5. ↑ A complete breach of the constitution. wdr.de, March 17, 2007, accessed December 4, 2011 .
  6. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau, September 2, 1986
  7. ↑ BGH: Ex-terrorists may refuse to testify. sueddeutsche.de, July 11, 2011, accessed December 4, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Hague, Siegfried
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Haag, Siegfried Gottlieb
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and terrorist, former member of the Red Army faction
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Aurich