November 1974, Stuttgart - Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (center) interviews Andreas Baader in Stammheim Prison at Ulrike Meinhof's request. On the left is Baader-Meinhof lawyer Klaus Croissant, and on the right is Sartre's driver in Stuttgart, Hans Joachim Klein, who later goes underground after joining in terrorist actions with "Carlos the Jackal."
Baader-Meinhof.com: Timeline 1974
"We then spoke of his life in prison. I asked him why he was on a hunger strike. He answered that he was doing it in protest against the conditions of his incarceration.
As we now know, there are a certain number of cells in the prison I went to, but these also exist in other German prisons. They are separated from the other cells; they are painted white and the electricity works until 11:00 pm, and sometimes 24 hours out of 24.
And there’s something he’s missing: sound. Apparatuses in the interior of the cell select sounds, weaken them and render them perfectly inaudible within the cell itself. [...]
These procedures, reserved for political prisoners alone — at least, those of the Baader-Meinhof Group — are procedures contrary to the Rights of Man.
According to the Rights of Man, a prisoner should be treated like a man. To be sure, he is locked up, but he shouldn’t be the object of any torture, or anything having as its goal to bring on the death or degradation of the human person. This system is precisely against the human person and destroys it."
Jean-Paul Sartre 1974: The Slow Death of Andreas Baader
The Baader-Meinhof myth was born inside Stammheim prison. Leftwing sympathisers, including the country's most prominent writers and intellectuals, maintained that they were being tortured in appalling conditions. Stammheim was "like Auschwitz", they absurdly claimed.
Celebrities, like the novelist Heinrich Böll and the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, were wheeled in to dramatise their plight. Although the aged Frenchman privately observed "what an a***hole" after being lectured by Baader in the jail's spartan visitors' suite, on live German TV he lied: "Baader has the face of a tortured man." [...]
Actually, their wing was comfortable; they could choose the colour of the walls. Their cells had libraries and Baader had 974 books including Contemporary Explosives Technology and the Special Forces Handbook. [...]
The cells had electric blankets, which the terrorists had insisted on, to keep the electricity on at night. The inmates promptly converted high-fi amplifiers and the warders' intercoms into a communication network.
Mail online: Clowns of terror: The Baader-Meinhof gang were hopelessly incompetent, befuddled by drugs and casual sex
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