STUTTGART LETTER:FOR 35 years Michael Buback has waited to hear the name of the person who shot his father dead.
For more than a year he has sat in a Stuttgart courtroom, facing the woman he believes pulled the trigger – Verena Becker.
For 87 days in court Becker, a 59-year-old former member of the extreme left-wing terrorist group Red Army Faction has sat impassively, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, as state prosecutors build a case against her of aiding and abetting murder.
Their main accusation is that Becker helped plan the drive-by shooting of West German federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback in Karlsruhe in April 1977.
Yesterday, on day 88 of her trial, Becker strolled into the white pentagonal courtroom 20 minutes late wearing jeans, a grey pullover and blue blouse. Her figure was as boyish as her gait, her hair as black as in her 1970s mugshot. Carefully she removed her sunglasses and, for the first time, broke her silence.
“You want to know who killed your father,” she said to Michael Buback in a voice both girlish yet strained by age. “This question I cannot answer as I wasn’t there.”
Becker’s terrorism career began four decades ago. In retaliation for the Bloody Sunday massacre she helped bomb a British yacht club in her native West Berlin, killing one.
She was convicted but served less than a year of her six-year sentence, released in exchange for a politician kidnapped by the Red Army Faction.
Becker became a key player in the faction’s so-called second generation, running a 1977 campaign of bombings, kidnappings and killings designed to force the release of imprisoned founders of the organisation, who saw the West German establishment as riddled with former Nazis. Gang members killed 34 before disbanding in 1998.
The shooting of Buback, his driver and a security man by a motorbike pillion passenger in Karlsruhe shook the West German establishment to its core.
Four Red Army Faction members were arrested and convicted for organising the killings but the assassin was never found and surviving gang members still refuse to name names.
After three decades of living with this uncertainty, Michael Buback launched a private investigation into his father’s killing. He turned up enough information on Becker to prompt a police raid on her home. Investigators used evidence found in that raid to link her to the planning of the killing. Buback goes further, believing she fired the shots, though no evidence has yet emerged to support this claim.
The case against Verena Becker has raised serious questions about the original investigation. Becker was arrested a month after Buback was shot, in her possession the murder weapon and a screwdriver missing from the getaway motorbike tool kit. Despite this she was never charged with involvement in the killing and was jailed for 12 years for resisting arrest and injuring a policeman.
Yesterday Becker denied any involvement in the killing. She said she attended two meetings in 1976 where such an act was discussed but claimed she left a third meeting in 1977 before a final agreement was reached.
“We were involved in freeing the Stammheim prisoners and . . . an attack on Buback was seen by us all as correct,” she said. She denied ever riding a motorbike and said she was not in the country at the time of the killing, which she said she read about in a newspaper in Rome.
“I didn’t know that an attack was planned for April 7th and, if I had, I would have planned my return later,” she said.
And the murder weapon? She said she was returning it to a Red Army Faction weapons depot at the time of her arrest.
The troubling question lingering over this case is why German authorities have enough evidence to link Becker to the Buback killing now, but not 35 years ago.
One fact known now but not then is that, while in the RAF, Becker had regular contacts to West German security services.
“There is a belief, shared by Buback, myself and others, that her co-operation goes back before Buback, that information she gave helped arrest others charged with planning the Buback killing,” said author Wolfgang Kraushaar, who has written a book on the case.
Did the West German authorities ignore evidence against Becker in 1977 to protect an informer? The extent and duration of the contact remains a state secret.
Becker made no reference to her informant activities yesterday. After 20 minutes reading her statement, she donned her sunglasses once more and folded her hands before her.
The prosecutor accused her of telling half-truths, denying involvement in the Buback killing but not explicitly ruling out having learned later who pulled the trigger.
For Michael Buback, Becker’s 20-minute statement was a missed opportunity to “shed light on the darkness” of his father’s death.
“I had some small hope today . . . but this statement falls short of my expectations,” said Mr Buback to an impassive, unrepentant Verena Becker.
The murder case against her continues and a verdict is expected next month.
