Hans-Joachim Klein (born 1947[1]) is a former member of the German left-wing militant group Revolutionary Cells (RZ). In 1975 Klein participated in an attack on OPEC headquarters in Vienna organized by Carlos the Jackal, in which he was seriously injured. He publicly renounced political violence two years later. After decades in hiding, he was arrested in 1998 and prosecuted for his role in the OPEC attack. Klein was sentenced to nine years imprisonment and paroled in 2003.
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Hans-Joachim Klein came from a working-class background.[2] His mother, who was imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp for rassenschande during World War II, killed herself a few months after Klein was born, and he spent some time in a foster home after her death.[3] Klein was physically abused by his father, who took custody of him again after he remarried.[3][4] For most of his life Klein believed incorrectly that his father had been an SS member and his mother had been Jewish.[5]
In the 1970s Klein worked for the legal Red Army Faction prisoner support group Red Aid (Rote Hilfe) in Frankfurt and subsequently for the RAF lawyer Klaus Croissant in Stuttgart.[6] At one point he shared a Frankfurt commune with Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit.[7] He served as Jean-Paul Sartre's chauffeur when Sartre visited the imprisoned Andreas Baader in December 1974.[6] He joined the RZ in 1975.[1] Klein has described Holger Meins' death on hunger strike as inspiring his turn to violence; he carried a photo of Meins' emaciated body in his wallet.[2] In 1975 he took part in an attack on an OPEC conference in Vienna organized by Carlos the Jackal, in which three people were killed and Klein himself was shot in the stomach.[8]
Klein renounced terrorism in 1977, sending a letter to Der Spiegel (with his gun enclosed) in which he warned of planned RZ attacks on two leaders of the German Jewish community.[3][9] He then went underground, hiding from his former comrades as well as the police.[9] Klein further explained his change of views in a 1978 interview with the French journalist Jean-Marcel Bouguereau and a 1979 book, titled "Mercenary Death," which Cohn-Bendit wrote the foreword to.[8]
After spending two decades in hiding, mostly in France, in September 1998, he was apprehended in the Normandy village of Sainte-Honorine-la-Guillaume, where he had been living for five years.[3][8][10] After his arrest several German and French public figures, including Cohn-Bendit, Bouguereau, and André Glucksmann, stated publicly that they had been aware of Klein's location and had assisted him during his time in hiding.[8] Eighteen months after his arrest Klein was extradited to Germany to stand trial for his role in the OPEC attack.[11]
At trial Klein admitted participating in the attack, but denied having killed anyone.[11] He also testified that Libya had assisted in the raid, giving the attackers weapons and information on the conference's security arrangements.[10] Fischer, then Germany's Foreign Minister, testified at his trial as a character witness; his presence intensified the controversy then playing out over his radical past.[12][13] In February 2001, after a four-month trial, Klein was convicted of murder, attempted murder, and hostage taking, and sentenced to nine years in prison.[11] The prosecution had asked for 14 years, but Klein was given a lighter sentence because he provided authorities with information about other participants in the attack.[11] In 2003 he was released on parole and returned to Normandy.[10]
Hans-Joachim Klein is the subject of the 2006 documentary My Life as a Terrorist, directed by Alexander Oey.[14] He also appeared in the 2007 documentaries Protagonist[15] and Terror's Advocate.[16]
Hans-Joachim Klein is married to a French woman and has two children.[3]