Death On Track 4

By James O. Jackson/Bonn

At first it looked like nothing more than a violent spasm in the 23-year-long war between Germany's Red Army Faction terrorists and the government. On June 27, operatives belonging to GSG-9, the country's antiterrorist unit, attempted to arrest suspects Wolfgang Grams, 40, and his girlfriend Birgit Hogefeld, 37, at the train station in Bad Kleinen, a small town in eastern Germany. Officials reported that as police closed in, Grams pulled a pistol, killed an officer and was then gunned down in the brief shootout that followed.

There it might have ended, except eyewitness accounts and leaks by investigators painted a picture of bungling, murder and cover-up. The scandal has ruined the careers of high government officials, and two GSG-9 men are under investigation for allegedly shooting Grams in cold blood as he lay helpless on track 4 of the Bad Kleinen station. The Red Army Faction, which had indicated that it might abandon violence, says it will resume its assassination tactics. The future of GSG-9 is in doubt, and Grams has become a martyr among young German leftists.

The events leading up to the Bad Kleinen incident began last year when Bonn issued a controversial appeal for a cease-fire to the R.A.F. Its leaders responded by promising to stop murdering high government and business officials. The overture, though, led to a lapse by the terrorists: they made contact with leftist sympathizers, who might serve as go-betweens in talks with the government. One was Klaus Steinmetz, 33. What the R.A.F. did not know was that Steinmetz had been a police informant for several years.

He made further contacts among the Red Army Faction leadership and on June 27 told GSG-9 he was to meet Hogefeld and Grams at the Bad Kleinen station. While Steinmetz and his R.A.F. companions sat talking in the station / restaurant, 54 officers deployed around the building to close in as the three departed. The police botched the job. When they pounced, they grabbed Hogefeld and Steinmetz, believing him to be Grams. Instead of fleeing, though, Grams drew a pistol from his waistband and opened fire. One officer was wounded; a second fell dead. Officers saw Grams "suddenly fall backward" from the station platform onto track 4. A medical team tried to treat his wounds as Grams lay sprawled across the ties, but he died on the spot from a head wound.

Outside the official investigation, a different story began to circulate. News organizations quoted two witnesses as saying policemen held Grams down after he was captured and shot him to death at point-blank range. Said Joanna Baron, a sales-clerk at a station food stand: "Two policemen walked up to Grams, who was lying motionless. One bent over and shot him several times from close up. Then the second officer shot at Grams, but more at his stomach and legs. He shot several times." The subsequent medical examination supported eyewitness accounts: it showed that the shot that caused the fatal wound to Grams' head was fired from close range.

Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters, a confidant of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's, took responsibility for mishandling the case and resigned in July, closely followed by the chief federal prosecutor, Alexander von Stahl. The head of the antiterrorism division, Rainer Hoffmeyer, has been sharply criticized and may be forced to resign. There have been so many demands for reforming or disbanding GSG-9 that Kohl paid a highly publicized visit to the unit to praise the dead officer and deplore "attempts to make a martyr of his murderer."

The Red Army Faction may have gained new vitality. "If you don't allow us . . . to live," said an R.A.F. communique, "then you must understand that your elites also cannot live." The group's leadership has once again gone to ground, and security forces are on the alert. More assassination attempts, officials warn, can be expected.