Germany frees 'Autumn' ringleader

BERLIN - Throughout the 1970s, the Red Army Faction was the scourge of capitalist West Germany, and Christian Klar one of the group's most notorious leaders - the force behind a murder spree that included the slayings of a federal prosecutor, an industrialist, and the chief of a major bank.

Yesterday, Klar walked free from prison - angering family and friends of victims and many Germans who recalled the fear of living through the Marxist-Leninist group's terror campaign, which killed 34 people and injured hundreds before the group formally disbanded in 1998.

Opponents of Klar's release say he has never expressed regret for his crimes, nor explicitly distanced himself from the Red Army Faction mantra that it was justified in its brutal response to what it viewed as capitalist oppression of workers and US imperialism in West Germany.

German law is based on the principle of rehabilitation and it is very common for convicted murderers to serve less than 20 years for life sentences.

Only one former member of the group, Birgit Hogefeld, remains in prison. She will be eligible for parole in 2011.

Yet as a ringleader of the group's second generation, which carried out the "German Autumn," an especially bloody period of leftist violence in late 1977, Klar is perhaps Germany's most prominent former left-wing terrorist to walk free.

ASSOCIATED PRESS