Socialist Patients Collective Brigitte Mohnhaupt
Originally a member of the Socialists Patients Collective, Brigitte Mohnhaupt was first active in the RAF in 1971. Ultimately she would go on to become one of the most important members of the RAF.
She was first arrested on June 9, 1972. After her arrest she was convicted of Membership in a Criminal Organization, and give four and a half years. During 1976 she was transferred to Stammheim Prison to serve the final months of her time with most of the other major Baader-Meinhof defendants.
Soon thereafter she was released (27 January, 1977), went immediately underground, and then participated in the July 1977 murder of Jürgen Ponto and the September 1977 kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer.
On May 11, 1978, Mohnhaupt was arrested in Zagreb, Yugoslavia along with Sieglinde, Hoffman, Rolf Clemens Wagner, and Peter-Jürgen Boock. On November 17 of that year, the four members of the RAF were allowed to leave Yugoslavia for the country of their choosing; West German had turned down the Yugoslavian offer to exchange the fugitives for eight Croatian political fugitives living in West Germany.
On September 15, 1981, Mohnhaupt took part in an assassination attempt on US General Frederick Kroesen in Heidelberg using four RPG-7 anti-tank rockets against his Mercedes. Kroesen survived.
On November 11, 1982, Mohnhaupt was arrested near Frankfurt am Main along with fellow RAF member Adelheid Schulz. Mohnhaupt was put on trail for her various crimes and sentences to five life terms, with a minimum mandatory 24 year sentence. The court concluded that Mohnhaupt was a major figure in the RAF, but could not conclusively prove that she had been directly involved in the murder of Schleyer and others.
On February 12, 2007, the appellate court of Stuttgart granted Mohnhaupt parole; her release was scheduled for March 27. Her pending release generated considerable debate within Germany, with representatives of the national police union objecting to the release, noting that the RAF had killed 10 police officers. Other noted that Mohnhaupt had been in prison longer than any Nazi criminal had ever served for their crimes.
Mohnhaupt walked free from Aichach prison on March 25, 2007.