On April 7 in 1977 Germany’s chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback set off to work in his chauffeured, dark blue Mercedes for the last time. Shortly after 9 a.m., a motorcycle pulled up next to the car at a stoplight on the outskirts of Karlsruhe in western Germany. The motorcycle passenger proceeded to fire at least 15 bullets into the car. Buback and his 30-year-old driver Wolfgang Göbel died at the scene; the head of the chauffeur service Georg Wurster, 33, succumbed to his injuries six days later. Three RAF members were eventually prosecuted and sent to jail for the triple murder. But new information revealed in 2007 indicates that the police might have missed the most important perpetrator: They might have failed to get the gunman.
Am 7. April 1977 werden Generalbundesanwalt Siegfried Buback und zwei seiner Begleiter in der Karlsruher Innenstadt ermordet. Von einem Motorrad aus wird 15-mal auf Bubacks Wagen geschossen. Bis heute ist ungeklärt, wer die Schüsse abgefeuert hat. Das Attentat war der Auftakt der “Offensive 77” der RAF, mit der die in Stuttgart-Stammheim inhaftierten Gründungsmitglieder freigepresst werden sollten. Am 30. Juli wird Jürgen Ponto, Vorstandssprecher der Deutschen Bank, in seinem Haus erschossen. Am 5. September wird Arbeitgeberpräsident Hanns Martin Schleyer entführt – der Beginn des Deutschen Herbstes.
See original German news magazine Tagesschau of April 8, 1977
In an Interview with Deutsche Welle, Michael Buback, son of Siegfried Buback states that “back then only a few people were affected. Today, we’re all confronted with it (Terrorism M.B). We have to try to rid the world of this plague. That demands intense investigation. It requires us to collect all the known facts. We have to see what kind of terrible crime these were, and we have to make sure they are never repeated.” See whole Interview here.
After a hint was given to him by former RAF-member Klaus-Jürgen Book, Michael Buback started to do his own research on his fathter’s death and reopened the case . He very quickly learnded that none of the three RAF members Knut Folkerts, Christian Klar and Günter Sonnenberg, who were sentenced to prison in the 1980ies, was the one who actually shot Siegfried Buback. Michael Buback in his recently published book “Der zweite Tod meines Vaters” presents the results of his research:
1. Verena Becker was the “gunman” who shot Siegfried Buback.
2. For what reason ever Verena Becker was coverd by the investigators. Verena Becker is supposed to be connected to German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz which leads to the question: Have Intelligence Services been involved in the murder of Siegfried Buback?
This question caused a very interesting debate in Germany which basically teaches one thing: There’s still a lot of research to do, if we want to understand what happened during the years of RAF-terrorism. As long as it is taboo to even think about the involvement of secret services in these terrorist attacks we won’t get a step closer to truth. “It requires us to collect all the known facts”, says Michael Buback. But Germany doesn’t seem to be prepared to do this step yet. Facts, even if well known for years, are still ignored and called conspiracy theory which discredits everyone who puts them on the table.
It’s exactly what Focus-article of November 17, 2008 does: According to author Markus Krischer, Michael Buback is still in grief and not able to accept the truth about his father’s death, which is – for everyone who has read the book – absolutely ridiculous.
Nils Minkmar in his FAZ-article of December 8, 2008 says that there should be a parliamentary inquiery about the Buback case.
The Prenzlauer Berger 