German president: No clemency for Red Army Faction terrorist convicted of murdering US soldier

BERLIN – BERLIN (AP) — Germany's president said Monday he had rejected a request for clemency from a leftist terrorist serving a life sentence for the murder of a U.S. soldier and the deadly bombing of an American base.

President Horst Koehler said in a statement he decided not to grant Birgit Hogefeld early release after personally hearing her plea and "weighing all the factors."

He did not elaborate further.

The 53-year-old had appealed to Koehler after a Frankfurt court in 2008 ruled that she must serve until at least 2011 — 18 years of her life sentence — before parole could be considered, given the "severity of the crimes" she committed. The president had already turned down one clemency request from Hogefeld in 2007.

Hogefeld was a member of the notorious Red Army Faction terrorist organization, which emerged from German student protests against the Vietnam War.

The terrorist group waged a violent, 22-year campaign against what members considered U.S. imperialism and capitalist oppression of workers.

It killed 34 people and wounded hundreds of others before declaring itself disbanded in 1998.

According to testimony at her 1996 trial, Hogefeld lured U.S. Army Spc. Edward Pimental of New York City out of a disco near Mainz the night of Aug. 7, 1985, to obtain his military ID. He was later found shot in the head in nearby woods.

The bombers used Pimental's ID card to get a Volkswagen sedan packed with 529 pounds (240 kilograms) of explosives onto the U.S. Air Force Rhine-Main Air Base as people were arriving for work the next morning.

Airman 1st Class Frank H. Scarton, 19, of Woodhaven, Michigan, and Becky Joe Bristol, a civilian Air Force employee from San Antonio, were killed by the blast and more than 20 others were wounded.

Hogefeld was arrested in 1993 after police caught up with her and her lover, fellow Red Army Faction terrorist Wolfgang Grams, at a train station in the eastern town of Bad Kleinen. She has received credit for all her time in custody in consideration of her calls for early release.

In the ensuing gunbattle, both Grams and a policeman were killed, while another officer and a train engineer were wounded.

Hogefeld, a former schoolteacher who was put on West Germany's most-wanted list of Red Army Faction terrorists in 1986, was charged in the death of the officer. During her trial, however, the court threw out the charge, saying she was already handcuffed and in custody when the shooting began.

She was, however, convicted of murder in the deaths of Pimental, Scarton and Bristol.