Читать книгу Putin’s People онлайн | страница 39

Initially, after the fall of the Wall, the West German authorities believed the Stasi had provided only refuge and false identities to the Red Army Faction members. But as prosecutors continued to investigate the Stasi’s role, they found evidence of a much deeper collaboration. Their investigation led to the arrest and indictment of five former Stasi counter-terrorism officers for conspiring with the group to bomb the US’s Ramstein army base in 1981, and attempting to kill General Kroesen.[71] Stasi chief Erich Mielke was indicted on the same charges. One former Red Army Faction member emerged to tell how the group would frequently be used by the Stasi to transport weapons to terrorists in the Arab world.[72] Another former member spoke of working in the eighties as a handler for the notorious Carlos the Jackal,[73] who had lived for a time under Stasi protection in East Berlin, where he lived it up in the city’s most luxurious hotels and casinos.[74] Inge Viett later confessed that she’d attended a training camp in East Germany to prepare for the 1981 attack on General Kroesen.[75]

But amid the tumult of German reunification, there was no political will to root out the evils of the GDR’s past and bring the Stasi men to trial. The five-year statute of limitations on those charged with collaboration with the Red Army Faction was deemed to have passed, and the charges dropped away.[76] The memory of their crimes faded, while the KGB’s involvement with the Red Army Faction was never investigated at all. But all the while the Soviets had overseen the operations of the Stasi, with liaison officers at every command level. At the highest level KGB control was so tight that, according to one former Red Army Faction member, ‘Mielke wouldn’t even fart without asking permission in Moscow first.’[77] ‘The GDR could do nothing without coordination with the Soviets,’ said a defector from the senior ranks of the Stasi.[78]

This was the environment Putin was working in – and the story that the former Red Army Faction member had to tell about Dresden fitted closely with that. According to him, in the years that Putin served in East Germany, Dresden became a meeting place for the Red Army Faction.