Two students have gone on trial here, accused of bombings aimed at politicians and foreign diplomats. The trial is seen as a final chapter in the saga of leftist terrorism in Germany.
In a heavily guarded Dusseldorf court, prosecutors Friday accused the pair of being members of the Anti-Imperialist Cells, or AIZ.
The group took up the Red Army Faction’s mantle when the Faction proclaimed a 1992 truce after about two decades of terror against the German government, industry and U.S. military presence.
Bernhard Falk, 30, and Michael Stienau, 31, are charged with five counts of attempted murder and six bombings, in which several people were injured.
Prosecutors believe the AIZ had as many as 50 members, but its activities ceased after Falk and Stienau’s arrests.
Falk, a physics student, read to the court a 100-page document listing such injustices as hunger and the Hiroshima bombing and calling AIZ Germany’s “last fundamental opposition.”
He rejected the charges as baseless. “They will fall apart before the court,” he said.
