Sigurd Debus

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Sigurd Debus (born May 7, 1942 , † April 16, 1981 in Hamburg ) was an alleged member of the terrorist organization Red Army Fraction (RAF). On May 30, 1975, he was sentenced to twelve years in prison. During a hunger strike with officially ordered force-feeding , he fell into a coma and died a little later.

Life

As an employee of an oil company, Sigurd Debus probably had contact with various communist groups for the first time . He is said to have been active in the environment of the KPD , which was banned in 1956, in the early 1960s , before he probably joined the newly founded KPD / ML in 1969 . In 1970 he left the KPD / ML again in order to get involved in the HamburgerAktionsZentrum (HAZ), which was founded in 1971 . He was brought to trial for the first time in connection with a demonstration against the Vietnam War organized by the HAZ on May 24, 1972 .

Since mid-1973 Debus lived in illegality. A cellar depot with chemicals for making explosives had caught fire. The police also found evidence of him there for the first time. In the following time, Debus concentrated on setting up an urban guerrilla in Hamburg, possibly in order to set up his own group independent of the RAF. At the end of February 1974 he was arrested in a bank robbery in Hamburg.

On 30 May 1975 he was for involvement in bank robberies, an attempted bomb attack on the Protection of the Constitution headquarters in Hamburg, a bomb attack on the House of Industry in Cologne and the formation of a criminal organization sentenced to twelve years imprisonment and the correctional facility Celle detained. On July 25, 1978, Lower Saxony's constitution protection agency faked an unsuccessful attempt at liberation by means of a bomb attack on the prison in order to smuggle an informant into the RAF. Breakout tools that were found during a subsequent search were smuggled into Debus' cell beforehand. The authorship of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution only became known in 1986 and subsequently known under the name Celler Loch .

1979 Debus was transferred to the JVA Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel . There he took part in a hunger strike by RAF members on February 11, 1981, after relieving detention was rejected with reference to the bogus attempt at liberation. From March 19, 1981, he was force-fed. He fell into a coma on April 8th and had to be ventilated from April 10th. Death was determined on April 16. The autopsy revealed that the cause of death was “death of brain tissue with cerebral haemorrhage and greatly increased blood pressure”. Debus died despite being force-fed as doctors ignored severe thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency symptoms . The question of whether the hunger strike or force-feeding mistake was the cause of death remained open. The hunger strike was ended after his death became known. His death had already been falsely reported on April 11, which led to clashes between the police and militant left-wing radicals in some German cities.

Because of his participation in an RAF hunger strike and the terrorist background of his imprisonment, Debus is often listed as a member of the RAF. Organizational affiliation with the RAF has not yet been proven. The RAF's declaration on the occupation and hostage-taking in the Stockholm German Embassy of April 24, 1975 called for the release of 26 prisoners, including Sigurd Debus. In addition, a few months after his death, the RAF named a commando that carried out an attack on the headquarters of the US Air Force in Europe at Ramstein Air Base after Debus. Debus is also named in the RAF's 1998 declaration of dissolution, along with 25 other people who died as members of German left-wing terrorism groups .

literature

  • Christa Ellersiek, Wolfgang Becker: The Celler Hole. The background of the Feuerzauber campaign. Verlag am Galgenberg, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-925387-30-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernard Rambert, Ralf Binswanger, Pieter Bakker Schut a. a. (Ed): fatal shots. Solitary confinement. Interference with the law of defense. Critical comments on the report of the Federal Republic of Germany to the UN Human Rights Committee of November 1977 . Self-published, 1985, p. 130
  2. ↑ Andreas Juhnke: Death through nutrition. concrete issue 4/86; On the threshold of death , Die Zeit , April 14, 1989, no.16
  3. ↑ State bomb blows up the Celler Loch , Bayerischer Rundfunk from July 25, 2013 (audio) ( Memento of the original from January 29, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / cdn-storage.br.de
  4. ↑ a b Rolf Cantzen: “Aktion Feuerzauber” - Das Celler Loch , SWR 2 - “Wissen” from October 2, 2007, p. 11
  5. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff , Lars-Broder Keil : Rumors Make History: Serious False Reports in the 20th Century , Links, Berlin 2006; ISBN 978-3-86153-386-3 , p. 191
  6. ↑ All policemen on the Kurfürstendamm? Interview with Berlin's Justice Senator Gerhard Moritz Meyer (FDP) about the hunger strike and riots . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1981, p. 114-115 ( Online - Apr. 20, 1981 ).
  7. ↑ Lorenz Graitl: Die as a spectacle: On the communicative dimension of politically motivated suicide , VS Verlag 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-18461-6
personal data
SURNAME Debus, Sigurd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German alleged member of the Red Army faction
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1942
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1981
Place of death Hamburg