E. Germany Admits Sheltering West’s ‘Wanted’ : Terrorism: Six Red Army Faction members are seized, 25 are sought in murders, bombings and kidnapings.

East Germany admitted Friday that the ousted Communist regime sheltered some of West Germany’s most-wanted terrorists for more than a decade in a carefully planned conspiracy shattered by a string of arrests this month.

In the closest cooperation yet between East and West German police, six suspected members of the Red Army Faction have been apprehended in East Germany over the past 10 days in connection with a series of murders, bombings and kidnapings, officials in both countries said.

Another 25 suspected members of the leftist gang are still being sought in East Germany, where officials credited citizens who tipped off police with some of the latest arrests. West German “wanted” posters are now permitted in East Germany.

Those still being sought include a married couple linked to the 1985 bombing that left two people dead and 20 others wounded at a U.S. Air Force Base near Frankfurt, West Germany.

The arrests have been carried out without incident in three cities by East German police, with a team of West German authorities permitted to observe but not participate, officials said.

Investigators have not yet determined whether the fugitives used East Germany as a base for any terrorist operations or merely sought sanctuary here after the bloody attacks in West Germany.

“It looks like they lived normal, quiet lives here,” said East German Interior Ministry spokesman Dieter Michtel.

“Those arrested so far have been described as nice, friendly neighbors,” he said. “Neighborhood children even called one of the women ‘Grandma.’ ”

East German Interior Minister Peter-Michael Diestel told a news conference here that the former Communist regime’s dreaded secret police, the Stasi, had apparently run a type of halfway house for West German terrorists since 1980.

They were given new identity papers, apartments and jobs, Diestel said. Those arrested reportedly included a doctor and his wife, a nurse.

Diestel’s spokesman, Michtel, said in a telephone interview that the search for the fugitives began two weeks ago when West German authorities approached their East German counterparts with information from undisclosed sources.

West Germany’s federal police agency had spent countless money and manpower over the past decade searching the globe for hard-core Red Army fugitives linked to deadly attacks against military, government and industrial targets.

The search at times led investigators to Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon in hopes of finding people who may, in fact, have been hiding in East Germany the whole time, officials said.

“Of course, we are not happy about that,” said Brunhilde Spies-Mohr, spokeswoman for the Federal Crimes Office in Wiesbaden, West Germany. “But at that time, there was just no contact with East Germany. We expect that German reunification will give us a chance to catch them all.”

West German authorities have not yet interrogated any of the four women and two men arrested and still held in East Germany, she said, and extradition could prove complicated, because the alleged terrorists now hold East German citizenship.

“That is a problem that needs to be worked out,” said Michtel. He said their rights as East German citizens may not be ironclad.

According to the East German Interior Ministry and the official ADN news agency, those arrested include Monika Helbing, a 36-year-old nurse, and her 49-year-old husband, Ekkehard von Seckendorff-Gudent, a doctor, apprehended Thursday in Frankfurt an der Oder.

Helbing faces charges of bank robbery and her husband is accused of membership in a terrorist organization. The Associated Press quoted unidentified authorities as saying Seckendorff-Gudent lent his physician’s visiting pass for a Hamburg prison to suspected terrorists so they could meet with jailed compatriots.

The crackdown began June 6 with the arrest of Susanne Albrecht, 39, who allegedly participated in a series of terrorist attacks in the late 1970s, including two slayings.

Diestel said Friday that another woman, Christine Duemlein, 41, was arrested but has since been released because the warrant against her had expired two years ago.

The East German Interior Ministry spokesman said initial interrogation of some of the suspects has turned up no evidence that they actively worked for the Stasi, which has been dismantled since free elections installed a democratic government in East Germany three months ago.