Germany releases terrorist

STUTTGART, Germany, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Germany will release on parole a far-left terrorist after 26 years in prison.

Christian Klar, 56, will be released on Jan. 3, 2009, a Stuttgart court decided Monday. Klar, a former member of the now defunct Red Army Faction, was sentenced to life in prison. The court agreed to his parole request because there is no longer a danger that Klar will commit serious crimes, the court said in a statement.

Klar was convicted for his role in the killings of several high-ranking judicial and business officials in the late 1970s.

Because the former terrorist has not yet distanced himself from the RAF's killings, victims' family members are highly critical of the release.

German President Horst Koehler last year decided not to grant clemency to Klar, after significant pressure from victims' families and the conservatives.

Another RAF terrorist, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, was released in 2008 after the same court in Stuttgart determined that she no longer posed a threat to society.

The debate over their potential release has reopened old rifts between left-wingers and family and friends of the 34 people killed in the terror campaign the anti-capitalist RAF (also called the Baader-Meinhof Gang after its founders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof) unleashed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.