Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

574 • RED ARMY FACTIONThis group was formed out of the student unrest and leftist activismof 1968 when Andreas Baader (1943–1977), imprisoned in 1968 forfirebombing a Frankfurt department store, escaped on 14 May 1970with the help of Ulrike Meinhof (1934–1976), a left-wing journalist.Along with another comrade, they went to the Middle East wherethey underwent terrorist training in camps run by the PFLP. On theirreturn to Germany they engaged in assassinations, bombings, andkidnappings before being arrested in 1972. Those RAF membersremaining at large continued terrorist activities to pressure the Germangovernment to free their imprisoned comrades. After her arrestin 1972 and conviction and imprisonment in 1974, Ulrike Meinhofcommitted suicide on 8 May 1976 by hanging herself.On 27 June 1976 RAF members together with members of the PFLPcarried out the Entebbe hijacking, seizing an Air France Tel Aviv-to-Paris flight and diverting it to Entebbe, Uganda, where 240 passengerswere held hostage until rescued by Israeli commandos on 1 July 1976,an operation in which all seven hijackers were killed along with approximately20 Ugandan soldiers. On 13 October 1977 PFLP terroristsaccompanied by the RAF carried out the Mogadishu hijacking of LufthansaFlight 181, a plane flying from Mallorca to Frankfurt, divertedto Mogadishu, Somalia, on 13 October 1977, to force the German governmentto release RAF leaders Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, andJan-Karl Raspe, who had been convicted on 30 counts of murder on 28April 1977 and who were serving their life sentences in Stammheim-Stuttgart Prison. After the hijackers were foiled on 17 October 1977 byWest German Grenzschutzgruppe-9 (GSG-9) counterterrorism commandos,sometime in the early hours of 18 October 1977 the three RAFfirst-generation leaders all committed suicide. A fourth RAF member inthe same prison, Irmgard Möller, also attempted suicide but was unsuccessful.While the members of the group never had referred to themselvesas the Baader-Meinhof Gang, following the deaths of Meinhofand Baader the press began referring to the surviving group as the RedArmy Faction. Irmgard Möller was eventually released on 1 December1994 on medical grounds as no longer posing a threat to society.The RAF committed 53 noteworthy actions from 1972 to 1991,over half of which involved bombings, while about a quarter involvedassassinations or armed attacks. Only one notable instanceof hostage taking is noted, namely, the kidnapping of Hanns-MartinSchleyer on 5 September 1977, and two hijackings, the Air France