Preparing for Freedom?

The regional court in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe approved outings with a court-appointed chaperone beginning in July for Christian Klar, who has been serving a life term for his role in several murders with the urban Red Army Faction (RAF) guerrilla group.

Klar's attorney had issued a formal complaint after authorities in February rejected his appeal for more lenient prison conditions because he had recently made fiery anti-capitalist remarks.

In those remarks, he spoke of the "defeat of capitalism" and said Europe was being ruled by an imperial alliance.

Klar, who is eligible for early release in 2009, has also appealed to German President Horst Köhler for clemency.

This is strongly opposed by most of the families of his victims because he has never expressed regret for the murders.

Gripped by a violent history

German media have been gripped by the former leftist militant's fate for months, questioning whether the country is ready to draw a line under the bloody RAF campaign of killings and kidnappings that shook the nation to its core.

Klar was jailed for a series of killings, including the shooting of federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback, during the RAF's violent campaign against what it called the oppressive capitalist West German state and elite in the 1970s and early 1980s.

However, an ex-RAF radical has recently come to say Klar was not involved in Buback's murder and has blamed another man for the killing.

German authorities are now reviewing those claims and reports that the state was aware of testimonies in the early 1980s stating that Klar was not guilty of Buback's killing.

Opting for silence

To this day, members of the group have refused to provide information about their crimes, leaving German officials and victims' relatives uncertain about who actually pulled the trigger in a number of high-profile cases.

Former RAF member Peter-Juergen Boock, who spent 17 years in prison for his role in the group, broke that silence in a weekend interview with Der Spiegel newsmagazine.

He said he believed Klar had driven the getaway car for the two RAF members who ambushed Buback in April 1977, and suggested that German authorities had misidentified the trigger-man in the shooting.

Buback was the first victim of a bloody era dubbed the "German Autumn" of 1977 when he was shot in his Mercedes car by a RAF gunman on a motorcycle in Karlsruhe.

In February, a German court ordered the release of another RAF leader, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, after 24 years in jail on the basis that she no longer poses a threat to society.

The RAF is suspected of killing 34 people before laying down its arms in 1992. The group officially disbanded six years later.