Sieglinde Hofmann

Sieglinde Hofmann (born 14 March 1945 in Bad Königshofen, Lower Franconia) was a militant and member of both the Red Army Faction and the SPK.

Biography

As a child Hofmann attended a Catholic girls' school and went on to train to become a nurse and then a social worker. She was believed to have joined the Red Army Faction (as part of their second generation) in 1976 after having first joined the SPK and was involved in the killing of banker Jürgen Ponto.

Hofmann, along with Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Peter-Jürgen Boock and Rolf Wagner was arrested on 30 June 1978 in Yugoslavia, but they were all freed and flown to an undisclosed country of their choice. A lot of them went immediately back underground, including Hofmann. Two years later, however, in 1980, Hofmann was rearrested in Paris (alongside Ingrid Barabass), following a raid on a RAF safehouse.

Imprisonment

Although initially only charged with involvement in the murder of Ponto and condemned to serve fifteen years in prison, Hofmann was taken back into custody three days before the end of her sentence in August 1995 to be tried for other offences. The second trial was only possible after a judicial clarification in France.

On 26 September of the same year, Hofmann, then 50 years old, was found guilty of involvement in 5 cases of murder, and 3 cases of attempted murder by the Higher Regional Court in Stuttgart, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. . Her crimes included her offences against Ponto, and other crimes such as a failed bomb attack on NATO Commander Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr. and the murder/kidnap of President of the German Employer's Association, Hanns Martin Schleyer. She was however released from Prison in May 5 1999.