The Red Army Faction was a left-wing terrorist organization that grew out of the 1968 student protests and sought to combat what it saw as capitalist oppression of workers and U.S. imperialism in the former West Germany.
Active from 1970 to 1992, when it abandoned violence, the group formally disbanded in 1998.
The group targeted NATO and U.S. military personnel stationed in Germany and carried out kidnappings and armed attacks on prominent German government and business figures. Over the decades, group members killed 34 people and injured hundreds more.
In its early years, the group was often referred to as the Baader-Meinhof gang, after leading members Andreas Baader — who killed himself in prison after failed efforts to secure his release through extortion — and Ulrike Meinhof, who also committed suicide in prison.
The Red Army Faction then regrouped and under the leadership of Christian Klar carried out the “German Autumn,” an especially bloody period of leftist violence in late 1977.
The group had ties to Palestinian radicals, the communist East German secret police, the Stasi, and allegedly collaborated with Carlos the Jackal, otherwise known as Illich Ramirez Sanchez, the convicted Venezuelan terrorist serving a life sentence in France for killing two French secret agents and an alleged informer in 1975. The Associated Press
