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Police probe Stasi links to banker's 1989 murder

German police are investigating leads linking the East German secret police, the Stasi, to the murder of a prominent banker claimed by left-wing extremists, a report said on Monday.

The Wall Street Journal Europe cited federal prosecutors as saying the investigation into the sophisticated road-side bombing that killed Deutsche Bank chief Alfred Herrhausen on Nov. 30, 1989, had gained a new focus and momentum.

"We are investigating everything, including leads to the Stasi," a spokesman for the federal prosecutor told the newspaper.

The Red Army Faction (RAF), the militant group also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang that waged an urban guerrilla war against the West German state and elite in the 1970s and 1980s, claimed responsibility for the murder.

But the police have never been able to charge any of its members and the case remains unresolved.

It is known that members of the RAF were sheltered by the former communist East German state, but when 10 were arrested in the year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they could not be linked to the crime because all had watertight alibis.

Prosecutors are now scrutinizing Stasi documents that propose closely copying terrorist groups' methods, so that attacks carried out by East German agents would not be traced back to the state, the newspaper said.

It said investigators had zoned in on the activities of a Stasi unit based in the small eastern town of Wartin, which was allegedly tasked with kidnapping and killing influential figures in West Germany.

Discovered documents have led them to think that the Stasi's ties with the RAF may have run much deeper than previously thought and that they may have trained RAF guerrillas or helped them carry out attacks.
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