Christian Klar was a leader of the second generation of the Red Army Faction, the West German group held responsible for 34 deaths between 1970 and 1991, which declared itself disbanded in 1998. In April 1985 a court in Stuttgart convicted him, together with Brigitte Mohnhaupt, of nine murders and eleven attempted murders. The judgment covered his part in the killings of three prominent men in the summer and autumn of 1977: the Federal Prosecutor General, Siegfried Buback; the banker Jürgen Ponto; and the employers' president, Hanns Martin Schleyer. Four men with Schleyer died on the day he was abducted, and two of Buback's companions died with him.
Klar was arrested in November 1982 and was in custody for 26 years, the minimum term the court had set. He was the last member of the group's second generation to be taken into custody. In 1992 a second Stuttgart trial added a conviction for a bank robbery in Zurich in 1979, but the court imposed a single life sentence covering all his offenses. In May 2007 the Federal President, Horst Köhler, refused his petition for clemency. Eighteen months later, on November 24, 2008, the Higher Regional Court in Stuttgart ordered his release on probation, finding that he was no longer a danger to the public. He left prison on December 19, 2008, about two weeks before his term would have ended. He has never given an account of who carried out the killings.
The Red Army Faction, known in Germany by its initials RAF, was held responsible for 34 deaths. Klar and Mohnhaupt were described at their trial as the leaders of its second generation. Klar was born in 1952 and was in his mid-twenties in 1977.
The year 1977 became known in Germany as the "German Autumn," the period of attacks and kidnappings that ended in October. The prosecutors who later charged Klar argued that the structure of the group made it difficult to attribute each act to one individual, and so they charged him and others with a share in all of the group's acts since 1977.
On April 7, 1977 the Federal Prosecutor General, Siegfried Buback, was killed in Karlsruhe. His driver, Wolfgang Göbel, died with him. Georg Wurster, the head of the motor pool of the Federal Prosecutor's Office, who was also in the car, died on April 13, 1977 of the effects of the attack.
Klar was among those suspected, along with Knut Folkerts, Günter Sonnenberg, Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Verena Becker. Klar, Folkerts and Mohnhaupt were sentenced to life imprisonment in the 1980s. Which individual carried out the killings has never been settled in court, a point that returned to the courtroom more than thirty years later.
Jürgen Ponto, the spokesman of the board of Dresdner Bank, died on July 30, 1977. Klar was involved in a kidnapping attempt directed against him that failed and ended in his death. The 1985 judgment tied Klar to this killing.
On September 5, 1977 Hanns Martin Schleyer, the president of the German employers' association, was abducted in Cologne. His driver, Heinz Marcisz, and three police officers who were with him, Reinhold Brändle, Helmut Ulmer and Roland Pieler, died that day. Schleyer himself was killed in October 1977.
Klar was significantly involved in the kidnapping and murder of Schleyer.
Klar was arrested on November 16, 1982 near Hamburg. He was the last member of the group's second generation still at large. He remained in custody until December 2008. Mohnhaupt, who was tried with him, was later released on parole after 24 years.
The trial of Klar and Mohnhaupt opened on February 1, 1984 at Stammheim in Stuttgart. The prosecution charged them with taking part in murders including those of Buback and Schleyer, and with their role in the group.
In April 1985 the court convicted both of them. Klar was convicted of nine murders and eleven attempted murders. The sentence, identical for both defendants, was five life sentences plus 15 years. The court found a "particular gravity of guilt" and set the minimum term at 26 years.
A second trial opened before the Higher Regional Court in Stuttgart in September 1992. The Federal Prosecutor's Office charged Klar with taking part in a bank robbery in Zurich in November 1979, in which one person died, and with five attempted murders and aggravated robbery. The court could not establish who caused the death of the person who died, and the conviction therefore rested on robbery resulting in death and on the attempted murder of four police officers.
The court imposed a consolidated sentence for the Zurich offense together with the earlier convictions. The result was one life sentence for all of his offenses. Parts of the German press criticized the proceeding as excessive, since the first judgment had already set a life term with a minimum of 26 years, and Klar had no prospect of release before 2008 whatever the second court decided.
German law distinguishes the life sentence from the minimum term. In 1977 the country's highest court ruled that a life sentence without any possibility of release violates human dignity, as protected by the Basic Law. A finding of "particular gravity of guilt," as the court made for Klar, lengthens the minimum term. In his case, the Higher Regional Court in Stuttgart decides whether the remainder of the sentence is suspended on probation once the minimum has been served.
Clemency is separate from release on probation and is decided by the Federal President. Before deciding in Klar's case, the President's office seeks statements from the Federal Minister of Justice, the sentencing court, the Federal Prosecutor General and the prison, as well as a prognosis on the prisoner's likelihood of reoffending. Release at the end of the minimum term depends, as the Federal Constitutional Court has held, on whether the person can be expected to commit no further offenses, and not on whether he shows remorse.
Klar applied for clemency in 2003 to the then Federal President, Johannes Rau, who made no decision. His successor, Horst Köhler, took the application up in 2007. Köhler met Klar in the week before announcing his decision.
The petition came during a public debate. Opponents, many of them conservative politicians, pointed to the fact that Klar had never expressed regret. A written message that Klar sent earlier in 2007 to a left-wing conference drew sharp criticism and was widely seen as having damaged his chances. A former member of the group, Peter-Jürgen Boock, was reported to have said that Klar might not have been directly involved in the Buback killing. A leader of the Free Democratic Party called Klar a convicted serial murderer and rejected clemency.
On May 7, 2007 the Federal President's office announced that Köhler had decided against granting clemency. The decision gave no reasons. Köhler turned down a separate petition from Birgit Hogefeld, another former member, on the same occasion.
Before the decision on clemency, in April 2007, the regional court in Karlsruhe was due to rule on measures to ease Klar's detention. In the summer of 2007 he left the prison three times for several hours, accompanied by an officer in plain clothes. The next planned steps were outings without an escort, longer leave and a move to an open prison with daytime work outside.
In early 2008 the Justice Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Ulrich Goll, ordered all relief stopped. The prison cited a risk of flight. A judge at the Federal Court of Justice had ordered six months of coercive detention against Klar, Mohnhaupt and Folkerts to compel testimony on the Buback killing. The Minister argued that a refusal to testify could be treated as obstruction of justice and as evidence of an attitude hostile to the law, which could stand in the way of release. Klar's lawyer, Wolfgang Kaleck, announced an appeal and said there was no sign that Klar meant to escape.
On Monday November 24, 2008 the Higher Regional Court in Stuttgart ruled that Klar was to be released on probation when his minimum term ended in January 2009. The court relied on expert evidence that he no longer represented a danger to the public. The Federal Prosecutor's Office, too, had come to regard him as no longer dangerous. The then Federal Minister of Justice called the decision entirely in accordance with the rule of law.
The ruling brought protest by email and telephone to the court. A co-pilot of an aircraft hijacked in 1977 by militants linked to the group returned his Federal Cross of Merit and wrote to the President, asking why perpetrators received more care in the state than victims. A criminologist at the University of Munich said the state had shown strength in dealing with its enemies by lawful means, while acknowledging the moral difficulty of Klar's silence, since victims' relatives have a right to know who killed their relatives. A justice minister of Bavaria said Klar deserved no sympathy as long as he showed none to his victims.
The court's order was carried out on Friday December 19, 2008, two weeks before the end of the minimum term, because Klar had earned time off through work in the prison. He was 56 and had served 26 years. The court found that his behavior had changed completely. He did not apologize or give information to help clarify other crimes. His lawyer said Klar would not appear on talk shows and declined to say where he was. A probation officer in Berlin, where he said he planned to live, was assigned to supervise him.
The Buback killing came before the Higher Regional Court in Stuttgart again in the trial of Verena Becker, which opened at Stammheim on September 30, 2010. She was accused of complicity in the attack. On Thursday September 15, 2011 Klar, then 59, appeared as a witness and declined to give evidence on the 1977 killing. The Federal Court of Justice had ruled that he had a comprehensive right to refuse, because answering could incriminate him. He was required to speak only about his personal circumstances.
The presiding judge, Hermann Wieland, and a co-plaintiff both urged him to help clarify what had happened. Mohnhaupt and Folkerts had also remained silent. In July 2012 Becker was convicted of aiding murder through psychological support and sentenced to four years; the sentence was low because she had already received a life term for other offenses, which the Federal President had commuted in 1989.
Which member of the group carried out the killings of April 7, 1977 has not been established. Klar was convicted of taking part in the murder of Buback and his two companions, but it has not been settled whether he personally carried it out. A former member, Peter-Jürgen Boock, has been cited as saying that Klar may not have been directly involved.
The nine murders of the 1985 judgment were convictions of participation, in a group that the prosecution treated as a unit. Klar has never given an account of his role, and he declined to testify in 2011. He has not expressed regret for the killings. These points were debated in 2007 and 2008, but under the law the decision on release turned on a forecast of future conduct and not on remorse.
April 7, 1977: Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback and his driver, Wolfgang Göbel, are killed in Karlsruhe; Georg Wurster dies on April 13.
July 30, 1977: Jürgen Ponto dies after an attempt to kidnap him.
September 5, 1977: Hanns Martin Schleyer is abducted in Cologne; four men with him die; Schleyer is killed in October.
November 16, 1982: Klar is arrested near Hamburg.
February 1, 1984: the trial of Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt opens at Stuttgart-Stammheim.
April 1985: both are convicted; Klar of nine murders and eleven attempted murders; five life sentences plus 15 years.
September 1992: the second Stuttgart trial opens; it ends with a single life sentence for all of his offenses.
2003: Klar petitions the Federal President for clemency; no decision is made.
May 7, 2007: Federal President Köhler decides against clemency.
Early 2008: relief measures are stopped by the Baden-Württemberg Justice Ministry.
November 24, 2008: the Higher Regional Court in Stuttgart orders release on probation.
December 19, 2008: Klar is released.
September 15, 2011: Klar declines to testify in the Becker trial.