![\"RAF3\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/raf3.jpg\")
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They used to be among Germany’s most wanted: When Ernst-Volker Wilhelm Staub, Burkhard Garweg and\u00a0Daniela Klette disappeared in the 1980s, West German authorities\u00a0considered them to be extremely dangerous.<\/p>\n
German authorities say all three belonged to the Red Army Faction (RAF), an extremist group that had killed\u00a0politicians and businessmen throughout the preceding two\u00a0decades. Also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, its members killed 34\u00a0people\u00a0in kidnappings, bombings or assassinations between the early 1970s and 1998. Among them was Alfred Herrhausen, at that time the chairman of Deutsche Bank.<\/p>\n
German police lost track of Staub, Garweg and Klette in\u00a0the 1980s. In 1998, the RAF stopped its activities, when its members realized that their attempts to change German society had failed. Some members were convicted, others were never caught.<\/p>\n
But the search for remaining ex-terrorists\u00a0resumed last year, when authorities discovered the\u00a0fingerprints of Staub, Garweg and Klette during\u00a0an investigation of failed attempts to rob<\/a> a money transporter. Now, there is another lead: Police say the three\u00a0may be responsible for a series of supermarket robberies \u2014 carrying at least one anti-tank rocket launcher with them as their weapon.<\/p>\n How did some of\u00a0Germany’s scariest far-left extremists turn into robbers?<\/p>\n German police have speculated that the former RAF members could\u00a0be in a dire financial situation\u00a0more than two decades after their disappearance.<\/p>\n In Italy, the highest appeals court decided at the beginning of May that stealing smaller amounts of food might not constitute a crime, if\u00a0\u00a0the alleged offender could prove the “immediate and essential need for nourishment,” according to the BBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the three cannot hope for similar leniency among German judges.<\/p>\n Officials say they are responsible for the robberies and that the gang might already have stolen as much as\u00a0$420,000.<\/p>\n Staub, Garweg and Klette are believed to live in the neighboring Netherlands from where they allegedly plan their attacks on German targets. Although the trio is reported to be heavily armed,\u00a0German media outlets have\u00a0mostly reacted with mockery. “Ambush\u00a0attack out of\u00a0the revolutionary retirement,” Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine commented<\/a>.<\/p>\n Already in 1999, Klette and Staub were believed to have\u00a0stolen approximately half a million dollars from an armored car. But\u00a0shared among the three, that money amounted\u00a0to\u00a0a monthly allotment\u00a0of less than $800. Investigators now believe that they spent their funds\u00a0too quickly or thought they deserved better\u00a0\u2014 forcing them to plan more\u00a0risky robberies elsewhere in Germany.<\/p>\n Experts agree that most terror groups stop operating after a certain amount of time \u2014 organizations such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA)\u00a0that are active over many decades are\u00a0the rare exceptions. \u00a0Law enforcement agencies in Germany still struggle with many of the murders that were blamed on the\u00a0RAF.<\/p>\n The murder of the Deutsche Bank’s Herrhausen, for instance, is considered a closed but unsolved case. Until today,\u00a0dozens of slayings\u00a0remains unresolved, and several extremists\u00a0believed to be involved in the deaths were never arrested, let alone convicted.<\/p>\n German authorities hope that the series of supermarket robberies could soon change that.<\/p>\n\n