Ex-terrorist had role in notorious murder

The Stuttgart state court ruled that, owing to a previous conviction, two and a half years of Verena Becker’s sentence counts as already served.

Becker went on trial in September 2010, accused of playing a leading role in the fatal ambush of prosecutor Siegfried Buback, his driver and a bodyguard. She was charged with three counts of murder, but prosecutors later dropped the claim that Becker was a co-perpetrator. They argued that she had pushed for the attack and called for her to be convicted as an accessory.

Judge Hermann Wieland said that Becker supported and “knowingly and deliberately” influenced the perpetrators but it was not possible to prove that Becker was involved in the killings.

In May, Becker, 59, told the court she was “never involved in concrete preparation” for the attack. She could not say who fired the fatal shots, which has never been resolved, “because I wasn’t there”. Becker said she was in the Middle East on the day of the attack.

An original investigation into Becker’s role in the April 7, 1977 killing – which took place during an especially bloody period of leftist violence in the then-West Germany – was closed in 1980 because of a lack of evidence.

Becker was arrested in May 1977 and convicted of armed robbery and attempted murder stemming from a shootout with police that preceded her arrest. She was sentenced to life in prison, but pardoned in 1989 by West Germany’s president.

Three other Red Army Faction terrorists – Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Christian Klar and Knut Folkerts – were convicted of involvement in the Buback shooting in Karlsruhe in which driver Wolfgang Goebel and bodyguard Georg Wurster were also killed. All refused to testify at Becker’s trial.

Becker was arrested again in August 2009 after a new investigation was opened.