GERMANY:A former Baader-Meinhof militant, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, has been released from prison after serving 24 years for nine counts of murder during a wave of anti-establishment terrorist attacks that shook Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mohnhaupt (57), who led the second generation of the Red Army Faction after the deaths of its founding members, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, was last month granted early release in a decision that split Germany.
Wolfgang Deuschl, the head of Ainach prison in Bavaria, southern Germany, said yesterday that she had been freed two days ahead of schedule to avoid the intense media attention which had surrounded her case.
"We reached an agreement [ on Saturday] that she would be picked up by friends," Mr Deuschl told a German newspaper. She left prison early yesterday morning after cleaning out her cell, he said.
He would not be drawn on whether Mohnhaupt would change her appearance or her identity. A friend's son had offered her work in a car dealership in Karlsruhe, southwest Germany, the magazine Focus reported.
Before her involvement in the Baader-Meinhof gang, she had earned her living as a painter.
Mohnhaupt, who was sentenced to five life terms for a series of kidnappings and murders which reached their peak during the so-called "German autumn" of 1977, will be on probation for five years and must report any change of address to the police.
The announcement of her release brought protests from families of the victims of the Red Army Faction, angered that she was freed despite having shown no remorse.