Ex-terrorist is jailed over 1977 assassination

Published on 07/07/2012 00:00

A FORMER member of the ­German terror group, the Red Army Faction, has been jailed for four years for her part in the murder of the state prosecutor 35 years ago.

Verena Becker, 59, was found guilty on three counts as two other people were also killed when Siegfried Buback was shot dead in his Mercedes car by a passenger on a motorbike in Karlsruhe in 1977.

Three members of the RAF, linked to the Baader-Meinhof terror cell, were accused of the killing, but refused to say who fired the automatic weapon.

Judge Hermann Wieland said Becker had “decisively collaborated” in making the decision at an RAF meeting in the Netherlands to murder Buback.

The federal high court found the weapon in Becker’s possession in 1977 and later found traces of her saliva on a letter in which the RAF claimed responsibility for the assassination.

Becker went on trial in September 2010 for complicity in the murder and pleaded not guilty. She was jailed in 1977 for armed robbery and attempted murder and served 12 years before being pardoned in 1989.