Terrorist Who Killed 3 GIs Freed : Germany: Red Army Faction member Irmgard Moeller, 47, released from Luebeck prison after 22 years. U.S. protests.

When Irmgard Moeller was imprisoned for life 22 years ago for the murder of three U.S. soldiers, the Cold War was in full force, the Vietnam War still raged, and then-Chancellor Willy Brandt’s “Ostpolitik” recognized what seemed to be a terminally divided Germany.

The 47-year-old Red Army Faction terrorist--Germany’s longest-serving female prisoner--walked free into a different world Thursday, a physically changed woman whose “anti-imperialist” views apparently remain much the same.

“It’s all still a bit unreal,” Moeller said as she was released in the Baltic Coast city of Luebeck. “A lot of people are going to ask how I survived all this time. I kept alive the aims for which I fought and felt the support of my sympathizers.”

Her first view of the 1990s, an era of the single superpower that trades with an increasingly capitalist Vietnam, was punctuated by scores of supporters waving red flags, singing 1960s anti-war songs and chanting “Freedom for all political prisoners” in reunified Germany.

The U.S. State Department protested her release on probation.

“While we recognize the independence of German courts, we are disappointed that an unrepentant terrorist who murdered three U.S. soldiers has been freed from prison,” the department said in an official statement. “Prior to this parole, the U.S. formally reiterated to the government of Germany our view that convicted terrorists should serve their full prison terms.”

But the German government has made a tentative peace with the Red Army Faction, which is blamed for about 50 deaths in attacks on U.S., NATO and German business and political targets during a 20-year campaign against “imperialism and monopoly capitalism.”

Moeller’s release could set the stage for the release of seven other Red Army prisoners who have served at least 15 years of their life sentences.

Moeller was convicted of driving one of two car bombs into the U.S. Army headquarters in Heidelberg on May 24, 1972, in protest of what she claimed was American genocide in Vietnam.

The blast killed Capt. Clyde R. Bonner and soldiers Charles L. Peck and Ronald A. Woodward.

Then a striking 25-year-old with long, dark hair and bangs, Moeller was arrested six weeks after the attack and was eventually sentenced to life in prison plus 15 years.

In jail, Moeller refused to undergo psychiatric evaluations to determine whether she is still dangerous, and the German magazine Der Spiegel quoted her in 1992 as saying that “the armed struggle was legitimate.”

Nonetheless, earlier this month a court in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, where the prison is, decided that she is no longer a threat to society and ordered early parole for reasons of poor health.

The woman who emerged from jail in jeans and a black leather jacket had long, graying hair and an age-lined face. She was pale and said to be suffering from heart and skin ailments and other problems stemming from 12 hunger strikes during her incarceration.

The daughter of devout Roman Catholics, Moeller was a middle-class university student in Munich when she moved from political protests to left-wing extremism in 1971, joining the underground Baader-Meinhof gang, which was soon renamed the Red Army Faction.

Among the group’s attacks were a 1975 assault on the German Embassy in Stockholm, in which four people were killed, and a 1979 attempt to murder Alexander Haig, who was then NATO commander.

The Red Army Faction received support from the Communist government in East Germany and got help securing training from Palestinian terrorist groups. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it was discovered that about 10 former members of the group had been living there under new identities.

German officials are still looking for a handful of Red Army Faction members accused of violent crimes.

In 1992, the Red Army Faction issued a statement that it would no longer attack “leading representatives of the economy and state.” In response, the justice minister called for reconciliation with the group.