Spectacle in Stuttgart

The most sensational, costly and politically explosive trial in West German history opened in Stuttgart last week. Four self-styled urban guerrillas, each handcuffed to a policeman, were ushered into a custom-built, top-security courthouse. There they faced charges on five counts of murder (including those of four U.S. servicemen), 54 counts of attempted murder and multiple counts of bank robbery, arson, bombing, forgery and grand larceny. After the recent murder of West Berlin Supreme Court Judge Giinter von Drenkmann, the kidnaping of Berlin Opposition Leader Peter Lorenz, the bombing of the West German embassy in Stockholm and the Shootout between terrorists and police in Cologne three weeks ago, authorities were taking no chances. Even the five higher-court judges who are hearing the case (there is no jury) were armed with pistols and had undergone training in target shooting.

Roaming Anarchists. The sources of all this concern are hard-core members of a group of anarchists who call themselves the "Red Army Faction," but are popularly known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. On trial are Ringleader Andreas Baader, 32, an art school dropout; Ulrike Meinhof, 40, a former journalist; Gudrun Ensslin, 34, a former teacher; and Jan-Carl Raspe, 30, sociologist. A fifth defendant, Holger Meins, died in prison last November after a two-month hunger strike. All are middle-class revolutionaries who emerged from the 1968 student rebellions in Germany determined to destroy "the System." In the two years from the founding of the Baader-Meinhof gang in 1970 to their arrest in June 1972, they roamed the country stealing cars, robbing banks and bombing police stations, newspaper offices and U.S. military facilities.

Rumors were rife that the gang's supporters would go to extreme lengths to disrupt the trial. A Stockholm newspaper received a letter threatening "unusual actions," including an attack upon Stuttgart with rockets, flamethrowers and mustard gas, if amnesty was not granted. Since two quarts of the deadly gas had mysteriously disappeared from a North German army post a few days earlier, the government sent urgent instructions to all West German hospitals and private doctors on how to treat mustard-gas burns. Authorities were also alarmed when one of the defense lawyers representing the terrorists disappeared shortly before the opening of the trial. Defense Lawyer Siegfried Haag left a note saying that he was "going underground to carry out important tasks in the battle against imperialism."

To tighten security, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt banned nonofficial visitors from government headquarters in Bonn last week and ordered that an armored car guard the chancellery building day and night. The concrete and steel Stuttgart courthouse is encircled by concentric chain link, barbed-wire and wooden fences. A steel net has been strung across the roof to keep off explosives and prevent helicopter rescue attempts. Hidden cameras monitor every inch of the floodlit complex, and more than 500 policemen share the guard duty. Roadblocks manned by submachine-gun-carrying police seal off the entrances to unauthorized visitors.

Inside, the courtroom's yellow plastic chairs are bolted to the floor so that they cannot be picked up and thrown. Everyone entering the courtroom has to pass through metal turnstiles, identification checks and small cabins for body searches. All personal belongings are impounded. Journalists, however, may keep one pencil, one pen and one notebook.

The Stuttgart trial, which will hear testimony from some 500 witnesses and 70 expert advisers, is expected to run as long as two years. The reason became obvious almost immediately. Only seven hours after the proceedings had begun, the presiding judge called a nine-day adjournment when defense lawyers argued that the prosecution had made "an organized attempt to destroy" their case. Their objection was based on another court's recent exclusion of three of Baader's chosen attorneys on grounds of suspected collusion with the terrorists. The court-appointed lawyers, with whom Baader refuses to work, have barely had time to review the 550-page indictment against the defendants.

Although the Stuttgart spectacle has drawn the most intense national interest, it is not West Germany's first anarchist trial, nor will it be the last. So far, 52 terrorists have been sentenced since the violence of the late '60s, 73 are being held in investigative custody, and 27 are on the wanted list. Beyond that, investigations have been opened against 200 other Germans who are suspected of supplying, harboring or otherwise supporting terrorists.

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