Andreas Baader - Stammheim

Stammheim

From 1975 to 1977, a long and expensive trial took place in a fortified building on the grounds of Stuttgart's Stammheim prison. According to reports from his jailers (including Horst Bubeck), the defendants, especially Baader, kept their cells as dirty and disgusting as possible in order to discourage searches for items that might be smuggled in; at this time lawyers and defendants were not separated by panes of glass during unsupervised meetings, as evidenced by photos taken by inmates. However, as a precaution against items being smuggled in, all prisoners were strip-searched and inspected and given new clothes before and after meeting lawyers.

During a collective hunger strike in 1974, which led to the death of Meins, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre visited Baader in Stammheim Prison where he was being held. He allegedly described Baader after the meeting as being an "idiot" ("Quel con !"). Although he did not like Baader's behavior, he criticized the harsh conditions of imprisonment Baader endured.

Meinhof was found dead in her cell at Stuttgart-Stammheim on 9 May 1976, hanging from the grating covering her cell window. Members of the Red Army Faction and others claimed that she was killed by the German authorities. The second generation of the RAF committed several kidnappings and killings in a campaign in support of their comrades.

The three remaining defendants were convicted in April 1977 of several murders, attempted murders, and of forming a terrorist organization, and were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Militants tried to force the release of Baader and ten other imprisoned RAF members by kidnapping Hanns Martin Schleyer on 5 September 1977, as part of the sequence of events known as the "German Autumn", which began on 30 July 1977 with the murder of the banker Jürgen Ponto.

However, on 6 September 1977 an official statement was released in which the state declared that the prisoners would not be released under any circumstances, and on the same day a Kontaktsperre ("communication ban") was enacted against all RAF prisoners. This order deprived prisoners of all contact with each other as well as with the outside; all visits, including those of lawyers and family members, were forbidden. In addition, the prisoners were deprived of their access to post, newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. The official justification for this was a claim by the state that the prisoners had supervised Schleyer's kidnapping from their cells with the assistance of their lawyers. It was claimed that a hand-drawn map had been found which had been used in the kidnapping in Newerla’s car on 5 September. On 10 September the prisoners' lawyers lost their appeal against the Kontaktsperre order and on 2 October it became effective.

On 13 October 1977 four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 on a flight from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt, their leader demanding the release of the eleven RAF prisoners detained at Stammheim. The aircraft was eventually flown to Mogadishu, Somalia, where it arrived in the early hours of 17 October. The passengers of the Boeing 737 were freed in an assault carried out by German GSG 9 special forces in the early hours of 18 October 1977 which saw the death of three of the militants.