Unfinished terrorist business in Germany. <gg>
Germany: Dead terrorist's brain row
Sunday, November 10, 2002 Posted: 6:48 AM EST (1148 GMT)
ar.atwola.com
BERLIN, Germany -- Prosecutors in Germany are investigating a claim that the brain of urban guerrilla Ulrike Meinhof was removed after her death and examined to find a reason for her violent behaviour.
Meinhof was a leader of the extreme-left Baader-Meinhof Gang which waged a campaign of killings, bombings and kidnappings against the establishment in the 1970s.
She hanged herself in prison in 1976.
Bettina Roehl, Meinhof's daughter, discovered the brain was being kept in a cardboard box in Magdeburg university in eastern Germany.
State prosecutors in Stuttgart said they were investigating if the brain had been removed illegally.
State prosecutor Eckard Maak told Bild newspaper on Saturday: "If Ulrike Meinhof did not give permission for her body to be used for scientific purposes, then the brain should have been destroyed after her autopsy."
Roehl said she wants the organ back to give her mother a proper burial.
She wrote in the Magdeburger Volksstimme newspaper on Friday: "You can only say there has been a proper funeral if the brain is buried with the body.
"A dead terrorist has a right to be treated fairly and the right to a decent burial."
Roehl said the brain was examined at a clinic in Tuebingen university on the order of a prosecutor and the doctor, Juergen Pfeiffer, discovered neurological abnormalities in the area of the brain which deals with emotional response.
The neurological damage would have been sufficient cause to argue that Meinhof acted on the grounds of diminished responsibility and the authorities tried to suppress the pathologist's report, Roehl said.
In 1997 the brain was removed to Magdeburg University for further examination where a researcher is comparing Meinhof's brain with that of a multiple murderer.
Magdeburg university officials said they were surprised by the revelations and an ethics commission at the university would meet on Tuesday to discuss the issue. |
