Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

144
Table 4.8
Group Affiliations of Individuals
Prior to Entering Left-wing Terrorist Groups, 1978
All
Terrorists RAF B2J/RZ Other
I. Prisoner aid organisations 27% 20% 29% 39%
New Left 10 9 14 14
I Student organisations 8 9 10 7
Independent communist or social
revolutionary groups 7 5 8 3
Corrununes 6 9 2 6
Independent protest groups/movements 4 8 4 0
I Womenls groups 3 0 12 3
Anarchist groups 3 1 0 0
I Armed service resistance organisations 2 1 2 1
I Youth groups 2 3 4 1
I Parties 2 4 ...,
0 1
Other 4 ;) 8 3
No answer 48 51 49 43
Total 126 123 142 121
Source: Gerhard Schmidtchen, "Terroristische Karrieren: Soziologische
Anlayse anhand von Fahndungsunter lagen und Prozessakten II, in: Herbert
Jaeger, Gerhard Schmidtchen, Lieselotte Suellwold, Lorenz Boellinger
( eds. ) , Lebenslaufanalysen: Analysen zum Terrorisrrrus 2 (Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 13-77, 71.
The prisoner help groups enabled contact to be established between
people outside of prison and the prisoners, and became a
continued
source of new members by providing contact with the terrorist groups,
and reasons to join the struggle in the form of revenge and aid to the
terrorists. The office workers of the defence lawyers saw the letters
from the imprisoned terrorists and could be manipulated by the defence
lawyers, who also organised the prisoner support corruni ttees ( see
chapters two and five).
As in the case of Sigrid Sternebeck the position of the prisoners
built up pressure on the people to do something. In the case of those
who held onto the legal scene after the death of Meins in 1974, as
Sternebeck did, this was even more difficult after Meinhof l s death in
1976. As she told herself: "How long do you still want to wait- -if it
goes further, then they are all soon dead". 14 7
The identification of the people in these pre-terrorist and
terrorist circles could be intensified in confrontation with police and
other authorities in support of the ideas of one I s group I
as a large
percentage were. They also exhibit a high level of participation in
unlawful demonstrations, with more participating in these than lawful
ones (see Table 4.9, page 145).
147 Sternebeck, Der Spiegel 33/1990, 62.