The alleged former RAF militant Daniela Klette sent a greeting from pretrial detention to the 31st International Rosa Luxemburg Conference on January 10, 2026, which was withheld by the authorities and has only now reached the newspaper junge Welt:
Dear Comrades!
A year ago, Rolf Becker conveyed my greeting at the 30th International Rosa Luxemburg Conference. Many people subsequently told me enthusiastically how expressive he was, and I was very pleased that it was in such good hands with him. As I sit here writing this, I heard the news that Rolf Becker has died. Such a great loss – a special person, comrade. Whose life was always intertwined with resistance against the prevailing conditions. He is missed today, yet will remain present. My deepest sympathy goes out to those who lived close to him, his friends, comrades, and his family.
I was arrested in February 2024 after three decades of living underground in solidarity. Now, I am in my second year as a prisoner in Vechta. A verdict in the first trial is expected against me in a few months. There is no end in sight to my imprisonment. On 49 days in 2025, I was transported, handcuffed and shackled, by a large police force to the former riding hall, which had been specially converted for this trial at a cost of 3.6 million euros. This location, also besieged by a police presence, was chosen in such a way that it is a major challenge for trial observers to even reach it. An undoubtedly chilling scenario designed to demonstrate my alleged “danger to the public,” a fiction fabricated by state authorities and the mainstream media. It is constantly emphasized that this is a perfectly normal procedure, a claim already refuted by this scenario. It is further refuted by the prosecution’s relentless efforts, against all better judgment, to fabricate our dangerousness and alleged propensity for violence and murder in the context of robbery.
For instance, when a witness, tragically retraumatized by the robbery, emphasizes during the trial the polite and reserved demeanor of those she encountered during one of the robberies, which had a calming effect on her at the time, this is not what the prosecution wants to hear. Nor is it what they want to hear that this calming behavior is corroborated by further testimony. No wonder, since their goal is to further legitimize the manhunt against Burkhard (Garweg, jW) and Volker (Staub, jW) and to secure the harshest possible sentence and the longest possible prison term for me. In doing so, they are following the long-standing tradition of the German justice system – those who do not submit, who do not betray, and who cannot be paraded as broken individuals are punished by state power.
This attack I am facing stems not only from the acts I am accused of, but it is also directed against the history of fundamental resistance in the Federal Republic of Germany, with which my life is intertwined. This history is part of the broader history of resistance, in which, over decades, people worldwide have risen up in diverse forms and movements against capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. And it is also the history of attempts to achieve emancipation and liberation that have existed for centuries. It lives on in the enduring dreams of a just world, where people live together with respect and in harmony with all other living beings and nature, and in today’s attempts to achieve this.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office is already preparing for the next trial against me. I am to be charged with:
1) an attempted militant attack in the early 1990s against what was then probably the most powerful bank in Western Europe
2) the destruction of a newly constructed prison in Weiterstadt by the Red Army Faction (RAF) in 1993
3) an armed anti-war action by the RAF against the Iraq War in 1991.
In the two wars waged by the US against Iraq since 1991, and as a result of the subsequent sanctions, many thousands of children were killed. Years later, when asked about this, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright replied that these wars were nevertheless justified. No one responsible for the many thousands of people killed, the devastated country, the subsequent chain of Western wars in the Middle East culminating in the current genocide in Gaza, or the millions of deaths caused by armed violence and sanctions, spent even a single day of their life in prison.
Against wars that serve only the profit of the few, against the power of capital, and against a prison system designed to discipline, break, and imprison the poor, the rebellious, migrants in immigration detention, dissidents, and political prisoners. Everything they rebelled against exists today more fiercely than ever before. Just look at how rapidly the assessments from a year ago regarding militarization and the necessary transformation of metropolitan societies at all levels have come true. This militarization also means the suppression and marginalization of all social concerns and ecological urgency from public discourse. Instead, fear is to be generated – fear of those seeking help, whether refugees or poor people, who are supposedly overwhelming the social systems and are often portrayed as criminals or at least parasites; fear of losing one’s right to exist if corporate profits fail to increase; fear of Russia, supposedly thirsting for war, and the growing power of China.
This is intended to pave the way for people to accept everything, or, if they don’t, to be suppressed with increasing repression. In Germany, the Palestine solidarity movement, the anti-capitalist anti-war movement, and parts of the anti-fascist movement are currently particularly affected by this. Even those who show solidarity with political prisoners are targeted by state repression.
The problems arising from the crisis of the Western capitalist system are to be shifted onto the lower strata of society through wage cuts, austerity measures, and reductions in social, healthcare, and welfare services—despite the certainty that this will lead to the spread of poverty, disease, and despair.
Outwardly, the so-called Western community of values relies on the military option to maintain or enforce power. From the perspective of this policy of the militarily stronger, millions are to become cannon fodder—and this time again in the core Western European countries, as we already know from the two world wars started by Germany. However irrational it may be, the willingness to drive the world into the abyss for the profit of the few lies in the logic of capitalist domination; “capitalism carries war within it like a cloud carries rain.” (Jean Jaurès, jW)
Many are imprisoned in prison complexes worldwide in connection with diverse stories of resistance against the madness of capitalism. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political prisoner in the USA for 44 years; Ahmad Saadat, a prisoner from the Palestinian resistance of the PFLP in Israel; the Filton 24 – prisoners from the Palestine Action movement in England (who are on hunger strike at the time of the RLK); the “Ulm 5”; Maja, Hanna, and all other antifascists; Andreas Krebs and his imprisoned comrades Marianna, Dimitra, and Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis in Greece; the prisoners of the GRAPO/PCR in Spain and the BR in Italy, who have been imprisoned for decades; the imprisoned comrades in Turkey, who have been on hunger strike for months against isolation torture and special detention centers; the imprisoned Kurdish comrades in German prisons; and the thousands of prisoners on every continent whom I cannot list here. They all live amidst this capitalist madness. They all need a perspective of international social liberation and the prospect of freedom.
Solidarity gives us the strength to survive this madness, and a counter-public sphere provides protection. All over the world, people are more urgently than ever faced with the question of how to overcome these turbulent, destructive conditions. And this question concerns me as well. I think several things will be crucial: doing everything possible to prevent World War III and all its accompanying consequences. It’s essential to continue resisting the genocide in Gaza, which is being carried out under the guise of a supposed ceasefire, and the gradual annexation of the West Bank by Israel, and to halt the progressive destruction of our ecological foundations. Stopping the aggression and destruction will only be possible through large, collective, and internationalist movements.
I also believe it’s important that those who have been involved in the struggles for a long time take on the responsibility of answering the questions of younger generations about why we haven’t succeeded to date, and to work out, as clearly and carefully as possible, what mistakes were made that must not be repeated, and what objective obstacles we must overcome in new ways. This is, of course, a process that takes time. And it must also consciously focus on paths to human emancipation, on discovering what we can bring into the world that transcends life in capitalist society and under its rules, and that can overcome the belief in the seemingly quasi-natural (or, more recently, divinely ordained) power of this system.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts here, despite my isolating living conditions, which are meant to exclude me from political discussions.
I am eager to learn about the international contributions and your debates, and I wish you interesting and productive discussions and a good time at this year’s Rosa Luxemburg Conference.
Warm, supportive, and militant greetings,
Daniela Klette