Men held in Berlin and released again not wanted RAF terrorists
German police detained and then released two men in Berlin in connection with a major operation targeting the far-left Red Army Faction (RAF) on Sunday.
The operation followed the surprise arrest of RAF terrorist suspect Daniel Klette six days ago.
The men were not Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, two RAF suspects still on the run, Lower Saxony police, the force leading the operation, said, contradicting earlier speculation.
A spokeswoman said any links between those held temporarily and the RAF were the subject of the ongoing investigation. The detentions took place in Friedrichshain, a Berlin district neighbouring Kreuzberg, where Klette was arrested on Monday.
The men were not formally arrested and were released by midday after they were identified, a police spokesman said.
In total, police provisionally held 10 people on Sunday, according to the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office. "All of the people have already been released after the identity checks were completed," it said.
The search for Staub and Garweg continues, it said.
Staub, 69, and Garweg, 55, went underground more than 30 years ago at the same time as Klette, 65. All three were members of the so-called "third generation" of the RAF, often known in the English-speaking world as the Baader-Meinhof Group after two of its most prominent original members.
Sunday's raid began at 07:30 (0630 GMT) and involved members of the national and city police forces.
The sounds of gunshots were heard at one location during the detentions, but no one was injured, the spokeswoman said. The noises came "in connection with a door opening."
Klette was arrested in her rented apartment in Berlin on Monday evening. She had been a fugitive for 30 years but was found living under a false name in the middle of the German capital.
The authorities accuse Klette, Staub and Garweg of attempted murder and a series of serious robberies between 1999 and 2016, some of which involved the use of firearms and a bazooka.
The RAF was founded in 1968 by far-left extremists Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof, with members active well into the 1990s.
During the time of the RAF third generation, the then Deutsche Bank boss Alfred Herrhausen (1989) and Treuhand boss Detlev Karsten Rohwedder (1991) were murdered and Herrhausen's driver seriously injured.
The RAF murdered more than 30 people during their reign of terror
but disbanded in 1998.
The group justified its attacks back then with the aim of destroying the capitalist social order in West Germany. There is widespread speculation they were part funded by the Communist East German state and its secret police arm, the Stasi.
