After the arrest of former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette, the police took a grenade and other potentially dangerous items from her apartment in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
The operation, for which the seven-story apartment building was evacuated late on Wednesday afternoon, lasted many hours until the early morning. “The measures taken by our emergency services in Sebastianstrasse in Kreuzberg have been completed,” the police then wrote on the online platform X (formerly Twitter). “The residents can return to their apartments.”
First, the police took away a grenade in the evening, and early in the morning another potentially dangerous object was taken out of the house and loaded into a special vehicle. This left around 1.30am. A third discovery followed later. The Berlin police did not provide any further information about the suspicious items. She referred to the investigators in Lower Saxony, who initially did not provide any more detailed explanations.
Grenade rendered harmless
In the evening, the police announced: “Our forensic scientists have so far taken a grenade from the building on Sebastianstrasse in Kreuzberg and rendered it harmless at another location.” An explosive ordnance disposal officer had brought out an object that resembled a smaller grenade. He placed the item in a safety box in a car.
The seven-story apartment building was evacuated by the police early in the evening and all residents had to leave their apartments. The sidewalk was closed. “Our forensic science team is currently investigating the potentially dangerous items found during the apartment search,” the police wrote on the Internet. At around 10 p.m. the exclusion zone was expanded, the entire street was cordoned off and some apartments in another house were evacuated. “A building opposite is being partially evacuated to allow additional items to be removed,” the police said. The evacuated residents should be accommodated with relatives, friends, in warm buses from the BVG transport company and in a gym.
During the search on Wednesday, the police had already discovered weapons, as a spokeswoman for the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office confirmed. “Der Tagesspiegel” had previously reported on the weapons discovery. The evacuation of the residential building in the Kreuzberg district had nothing to do with this weapon discovery, said the LKA spokeswoman in Hanover. After Klette was arrested on Monday evening, the police discovered, among other things, magazines from a pistol and cartridges.
Are investigators also on the trail of other former RAF terrorists?
The former RAF terrorist Klette lived underground for 30 years. Investigators arrested the 65-year-old in Kreuzberg on Monday evening. The Verden public prosecutor’s office and the Lower Saxony LKA have been searching for the former RAF terrorists Klette as well as Burkhard Garweg (55) and Ernst-Volker Staub (69) for decades. They are assigned to the so-called third RAF generation. Representatives of this generation are said to have killed the then head of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, and the head of the Treuhand, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. However, the perpetrator and motive are still unknown to this day.
It is unclear how close the investigators are now on the trail of dust and waste. For “investigative and tactical reasons,” the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office (LKA) has not yet released any further details. On Tuesday, LKA President Friedo de Vries proudly announced the arrest of Daniela Klette at a press conference in Hanover.
Specifically, Klette is accused of having, together with Staub and Garweg, carried out an explosive attack on the Weiterstadt correctional facility (JVA), which was under construction, in Hesse in March 1993. The explosion caused damage to the building amounting to around 123 million German marks.
Klette is also said to have attempted with other RAF members to carry out an explosive attack on a Deutsche Bank building in Eschborn, Hesse, in February 1990. The explosive did not detonate because the ignition failed. According to investigators’ findings, Klette and RAF members fired at least 250 shots at the US embassy in Bonn-Bad Godesberg in February 1991.
