Baader-Meinhof gang member Verena Becker jailed for 1977 murder of prosecutor

BERLIN, Germany — Verena Becker, a former member of Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang, has been sentenced to four years in jail for the 1977 assassination of a federal prosecutor.

After almost 100 days of hearings in a Stuttgart courtroom, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported, Becker was found guilty of acting as an accessory to the murder of attorney general Siegfried Buback, who had vowed to bring the terrorist gang calling itself the Red Army Faction (RAF) to justice.

Buback, his driver and bodyguard were shot dead by assailants who ambushed their vehicle in Karlsruhe, southwest Germany, on April 7, 1977. The shooters have never been conclusively identified, according to Der Spiegel, and most former RAF members still refuse to talk.

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Becker, now 59, denies any involvement in the attack. 

Michael Buback, the victim's son, insists that she was one of the shooters, Deutsche Welle said. He insisted that the case be reopened after gathering new evidence of her involvement, including one of her hairs found inside the motorcycle helmet worn by one of the attackers.

Buback maintains that Becker was subsequently protected by the German intelligence agencies because she was acting as an informant on the RAF – though the court found that there was no conclusive evidence to support that hypothesis.

Becker will serve less than half of her sentence, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said, since two and a half years have been cut for time already served.

She spent more than 10 years in jail for her involvement in the RAF's numerous terrorist attacks against the German state, which they accused of fascism. She received a presidential pardon in 1989.

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