Life Term Urged for West German Rebel
State prosecutors demanded life imprisonment Monday for a 43-year-old West German described in court as a chief strategist for the outlawed Red Army Faction urban guerrilla group.
Helmut Pohl is formally charged with complicity in a 1981 bomb attack on the headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in Europe at Ramstein, West Germany. Seventeen people, including two senior U.S. officers, were injured in the blast.
The prosecution, in seeking the maximum life sentence, said Pohl was a leading strategist and ideologist for the ultra-leftist front and had been involved in the planning of several attacks at the time of his arrest in July, 1984.
Pohl is on trial at the Duesseldorf High Court with a second suspect, Stefan Frey, 26. The prosecution asked that Frey be sentenced to four years and nine months for forgery and illegal possession of weapons.
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