While waiting at a traffic light in the city of Karlsruhe, West Germany, Chief Prosecutor Siegfried Buback was assassinated just as the light turned green.
Along with his chauffer and a bodyguard, Buback was killed by two people riding a stolen motorcycle, when they drove up to the right side of his limousine and emptied more than thirteen shots into the car with a submachine-gun.
Buback, like Judge Gunter von Drenkman who was shot while standing on his doorstep in 1975, was one of the main forces behind the trial of the Red Army Fraction (aka: Baader-Meinhof Gang), and the rounding-up and imprisoning of hundreds of anarchists and ultra-leftists. He also helped initiate new laws to increase penalties for “terrorist conspiracy,” to hold suspected terrorists for up to 5 years before trial and to eliminate the confidentiality of lawyer-client correspondence in government-defined “terrorist” cases.
A group naming themselves the Ulrike Meinhof Action Committee took credit for the shootings shortly after they took place.
Whether there exists such a group as the ‘Action Committee’ or if it’s just a ploy so the West German police can carry out more of their round-ups (3 anarchists have already been named as suspects by the authorities), it’s quite evident that whoever shot Buback did so because of the brutal murder of Ulrike Meinhof last year by prison guards and the inhumane manner in which the imprisoned anarchists and remaining members of the Red Army Fraction are treated.
While governments all over the world are shocked by the shooting of Buback, there those of us who feel a little better knowing that two people have zeroed in on new opportunities.