A smiling couple arrived bearing a bouquet of roses on the doorstep of the chief executive of Dresdner Bank. As the banker, Jürgen Ponto, turned to call for a vase, he was shot five times through the flowers by a woman terrorist.

That was almost 30 years ago, and yesterday the woman, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, pleaded with German judges to be allowed out on parole.

Now Germany has to decide if it should make its peace with the terrorists of the 1970s. The Baader-Meinhof Gang — later known as the Red Army Faction — killed 34 people, many of them members of the political and business elite.

The State, the police and the judiciary reacted with surprising ferocity, imposing years of solitary confinement on some of the captured terrorists.

It is an issue that still divides German society. Many politicians came to maturity during the 1968 student revolt or the years of ideological terrorism that it spawned. Liberal leaders, such as the Green deputy Antje Vollmer, say that even Nazi war criminals have not had to serve the lengths of the sentences handed down to the Baader-Meinhof followers. Other politicians and relatives of the victims say that there can be no forgiveness.

Mohnhaupt and her fellow killer Christian Klar were hardcore members of the gang. Besides killing Mr Ponto, they also shot dead the West German prosecutor-general Siegfried Buback and abducted, tortured and killed Hanns-Martin Schleyer, head of the West German Employers’ Federation.

Mohnhaupt was sentenced to five life terms and an extra 15 years. The judges took the unusual step of ordering that she stay behind bars for at least 24 years before being allowed to apply for parole.

Those 24 years were up yesterday. The woman who was led by a phalanx of police in bulletproof vests into a fortified Stuttgart courtroom no longer resembled the woman of the “Wanted” posters. Then, she was a resolute-looking blonde with mascara and thin lips. Today the 57-year-old has greying hair, bonier features and the sallowness of someone allowed outside for only an hour a day.

The hearings were held in camera and the judges will decide only next month on her release. She has not made a public declaration of remorse. “I think it would be inappropriate to say now, ‘I regret my crimes’,” Franz Schwinghammer, Mohnhaupt’s lawyer, said. “It would come over as rather insulting to the families of the victims.”

The leaders of the anti- capitalist gang — Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin — committed suicide in jail in 1976 and 1977. Others who were convicted have gradually been paroled and returned to normal life. Mohnhaupt and Klar have served far longer than any of the others. A psychiatrist’s report presented to court yesterday testified that Mohnhaupt was extremely unlikely to commit a violent crime again.

The prosecutor’s argument against parole was a pragmatic one: with the 30th anniversary of the killings approaching, a free Mohnhaupt would likely become a frequent guest of television chat shows, an overnight celebrity. That, in turn, would violate the rights of the families of the victims. Indeed the 90-year-old widow of Mr Schleyer — who was shot in the head by the terrorists after being tortured for six weeks — was quoted by the tabloid press as saying: “Don’t free the killer of my husband!” Klar, now 54, has also served 24 years in jail, but according to his original sentence he must wait another two years before applying for parole. He has appealed for clemency from President Köhler, who has been consulting people across the political spectrum before making a decision.

Other German terrorists have been released by presidential decree, but only on the ground of ill health or active attempts to make amends for their past. If the President frees Klar, the last of the terrorists, he will in effect be closing the chapter on the painful years.

“I don’t see extenuating circumstances in Klar’s case,” Klaus Pflieger, the Stuttgart prosecutor-general, said. “Putting mercy ahead of justice — that should be a very rare exception to the rule.” Yet there appears to be a real need to reintegrate the old terrorists.

Klar has been promised a job as a stage technician by the head of the Berlin Ensemble, Claus Peymann. Politicians such as the former Justice Minister Klaus Kinkel — who tried to begin a dialogue with the jailed terrorists in the 1990s — say that Germans should be open and tolerant enough to accept old terrorists back in their midst. “Somebody who has served 24 years in jail has to be given the chance of returning to society,” he said.

The way of violence

1968 Andreas Baader and his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, bomb two Frankfurt department stores

1972 The gang leaders, including Baader, Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof and Jan-Carl Raspe, are arrested. Their followers kidnap and kill almost a dozen people over five years in attempts to secure their release

1975 The Stammheim trial, prosecuting the gang leaders, begins. It proves the longest and most expensive trial in West German history and is stalked by violent protest

1977 Baader, Ensslin, Raspe commit suicide in prison after the failure of a plane hijacking to secure their release. Irmgard Möller survives

1994 Möller is freed on the grounds of ill-health and that she is no longer a threat Source: baader-meinhof.com

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