Three former members of the extreme leftist organization RAF who are still at large have been linked to a failed armored car robbery attempt near Bremen last summer, German officials said Tuesday.
The incident occurred in June when three masked people fired on a cash transport outside a supermarket near the northern city of Bremen, Deutsche Welle reports.
Police carried out DNA tests on the two cars which were used in the robbery. The results turned up genetic matches with the three former members of RAF who are still wanted, Daniela Klette, Ernst-Volker Wilhelm Staub and Burkhard Garweg.
Moreover, authorities believe that they robbed an armored car using automatic rifles and an anti-tank weapon in 1999 and stole more than 500,000 euros.
However, local prosecutors said there was no indication the attack had a political motive in the latest attack.
“Rather, it must be assumed that the crime was meant to finance a life underground,” prosecutors in the city of Verden said in a statement.
The former members were among many RAF members that disappeared when the organization formally disbanded in 1998, while DNA traces linked them to a similar attack on an armored van in Duisburg in 1999 and a prison in central Germany in 1993.
