Left-Extremist Endeavours

leading members of DHKP-
C to many years’
imprisonment
Court of Appeal (OLG) on 17 February sentenced the organization’s
executive for Germany to ten years’ imprisonment for
ringleadership in a terrorist association and on two charges of
attempted homicide, and a DHKP-C activist to life imprisonment
on a murder charge. Also, other leading DHKP-C members were
sentenced to long prison terms by German courts. The Public
Prosecutor General (GBA) at the Federal Court of Justice has
brought charges against several functionaries, including the former
DHKP-C press spokesman, on suspicion of membership of a
terrorist association. The DHKP-C executive for Europe was arrested
in Switzerland in mid-October on the basis of an international
arrest warrant issued by the investigating udge of the Federal
Court of Justice (BGH). He was extradited to the Federal
Republic of Germany on 17 March 2000. On 26 September
1999, weapons and forged documents were seized in a
safehouse (clandestine apartment) of the DHKP-C in Knokke
(Belgium).
In connection with the criminal proceedings and criminal investigation,
the DHKP-C protested against the "persecution and
criminalization of international liberation movements" and
launched an Internet appeal for solidarity.
Also, the protest campaign was continued against the ban imposed
by the decree of 13 August 1998, which became non-appealable
on 1 February 2000. On the Internet, which is intensively
used by the DHKP-C for propaganda purposes, the organization
made the following statement:
"DHKP-C will achieve that all the demagoguery and bans on
the part of German imperialism will come to nothing."
The pressure exercised by criminal prosecution authorities, but
also financial problems, forced the DHKP-C to give up several
apartments and offices which served as its bases; major events
had to be moved to neighbouring countries. Thus, the central
event celebrating the 5 th anniversary of its foundation and dedicated
to the memory of the "revolutionaries who died in combat"
on 10 April was organized in Genk (Belgium), with the participation
of some 5,000 persons.
Apart from Turkey, the focus of DHKP-C agitation is mainly on
the U.S. This was evidenced, inter alia, by its Internet comments
on the Kosovo conflict:
"What the U.S. imperialists - in other words: today’s Nazis - ...
wish to contrive with the occupation of Kosovo ... is to secure
the imperialist hegemony in the Balkans."
Although the DHKP-C’s relationship with the "Kurdistan Workers’
Party" (PKK) has been strained for quite some time - the current
political PKK course (cf. sub-para. 2.2.1 below) was qualified as
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