German Police Defuse Grenade Found in Red Army Faction Suspect's Home

German police officers guard a building where Daniela Klette, a 65-year-old alleged member of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group, has been arrested after decades on the run from armed robbery and attempted murder charges, in Berlin, Germany, February 28, 2024 - Reuters
German police officers guard a building where Daniela Klette, a 65-year-old alleged member of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group, has been arrested after decades on the run from armed robbery and attempted murder charges, in Berlin, Germany, February 28, 2024 - Reuters
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German Police Defuse Grenade Found in Red Army Faction Suspect's Home

German police officers guard a building where Daniela Klette, a 65-year-old alleged member of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group, has been arrested after decades on the run from armed robbery and attempted murder charges, in Berlin, Germany, February 28, 2024 - Reuters
German police officers guard a building where Daniela Klette, a 65-year-old alleged member of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group, has been arrested after decades on the run from armed robbery and attempted murder charges, in Berlin, Germany, February 28, 2024 - Reuters

The Berlin apartment block in which a suspected Red Army Faction (RAF) militant lived during three decades on the run had to be evacuated on Wednesday after authorities found a grenade in her apartment, police said.

Daniela Klette, 65, and two other suspects are alleged to have belonged to the third generation of the leftist militant group which from the early 1970s committed a string of murders and kidnappings of government officials, US soldiers and German diplomats, originally in protest against the Vietnam war.

"Our specialists have so far removed one grenade from the flat on Sebastianstrasse in (Berlin's) Kreuzberg and defused it in a safe place," police wrote on social media. "Other objects are still being examined."

It was unclear if a person detained on Tuesday and released the following morning was linked to the two remaining suspects: Burkhard Garweg, 55, and Ernst-Volker Staub, 69, who have also been at large for 30 years. Authorities declined to comment on media reports of a third arrest on Wednesday, according to AFP.

The charges against the three relate not to the militant group's political crimes but to bank robberies and at least one attempted murder committed between 1991 and 2016 to finance their life underground.

It remained unclear where Klette, now in custody in the northern city of Bremen after her arrest in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, hid out over the past three decades, though newspaper Die Welt published footage appearing to show her dancing at a Berlin carnival in 2011.



Bangladesh Says Student Leaders Held for Their Own Safety

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Says Student Leaders Held for Their Own Safety

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladesh said three student leaders had been taken into custody for their own safety after the government blamed their protests against civil service job quotas for days of deadly nationwide unrest.

Students Against Discrimination head Nahid Islam and two other senior members of the protest group were Friday forcibly discharged from hospital and taken away by a group of plainclothes detectives.

The street rallies organized by the trio precipitated a police crackdown and days of running clashes between officers and protesters that killed at least 201 people, according to an AFP tally of hospital and police data.

Islam earlier this week told AFP he was being treated at the hospital in the capital Dhaka for injuries sustained during an earlier round of police detention.

Police had initially denied that Islam and his two colleagues were taken into custody before home minister Asaduzzaman Khan confirmed it to reporters late on Friday.

"They themselves were feeling insecure. They think that some people were threatening them," he said.

"That's why we think for their own security they needed to be interrogated to find out who was threatening them. After the interrogation, we will take the next course of action."

Khan did not confirm whether the trio had been formally arrested.

Days of mayhem last week saw the torching of government buildings and police posts in Dhaka, and fierce street fights between protesters and riot police elsewhere in the country.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government deployed troops, instituted a nationwide internet blackout and imposed a curfew to restore order.

- 'Carried out raids' -

The unrest began when police and pro-government student groups attacked street rallies organized by Students Against Discrimination that had remained largely peaceful before last week.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location to be tortured before he was released the next morning.

His colleague Asif Mahmud, also taken into custody at the hospital on Friday, told AFP earlier that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Police have arrested at least 4,500 people since the unrest began.

"We've carried out raids in the capital and we will continue the raids until the perpetrators are arrested," Dhaka Metropolitan Police joint commissioner Biplob Kumar Sarker told AFP.

"We're not arresting general students, only those who vandalized government properties and set them on fire."