Former Red Army Faction (RAF) militant Brigitte Mohnhaupt is to be freed, a German court said today.
She has spent 24 years in jail for her role in a campaign of kidnapping and killing that shook West Germany in the 1970s.
Brigitte Mohnhaupt has spent 24 years in jail
The decision, which came after Mohnhaupt requested early release, was condemned by the relatives of her victims, because she has expressed no remorse for a murderous campaign that threatened West Germany's nascent democracy.
The ruling comes as President Horst Koehler considers a pardon for Mohnhaupt's former Red Army colleague Christian Klar, who has also spent 24 years behind bars.
"This is not a pardon, rather a decision that is based on specific legal considerations," the court in Stuttgart said in a statement. "The decision for probation was reached based on the determination that no security risk exists."
The court said Mohnhaupt would be released on five years' probation on March 27th.
Mohnhaupt (57) was arrested in 1982 and sentenced to five life sentences for her role in the murders of leading German figures including industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, Dresdner Bank head Juergen Ponto and federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback.
Also known as the "Baader-Meinhof Gang" after founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the RAF rose from the student protests of the late 1960s and the anti-Vietnam war movement.
Its members started by experimenting in alternative lifestyles in the "free love" communes of West Berlin and Hamburg before turning violent in a campaign against the German elite and US military personnel.