A life less ordinary

Like many other people, I travel to and from work each day on a London bus. And, generally, that's about as exciting as things get. But just over a week ago, as I waited at the bus stop on my way home from The Independent offices in Canary Wharf, something happened which turned my humdrum day-to-day life upside down. I was accosted by a young reporter; he wanted, he said, to ask me about my past.

So I knew something was in the air. But I was still astonished to find, when I arrived at my desk a few days later, that the local weekly newspaper, The Wharf, had devoted the whole of its front-page to me. The Wharf's lurid headline, "Baader- Meinhof gun girl working in tower", was to prove irresistible, and the "story" was picked up in even more graphic terms by other papers, including The Mirror.

To find myself described in the national press as a "Terror Girl" is quite odd, especially as I am 53 and have not touched a gun for 30 years. And it was no less of a surprise to find myself the subject of a news story, so many years on. In Germany, where my short career with the Baader-Meinhof gang actually took place, the press no longer shows any interest in me. But here the implication was clear - that I am still some sort of security risk, capable of running amok with an AK47 and that The Independent is irresponsible for hiring me.

Now, with a few days' perspective, how do I feel? Well, baffled and a little angry about this press intrusion. Everybody has experiences and memories that are impossible to forget. But I find that I am different: I have experiences and memories that other people don't want to forget, even though they happened such a long time ago.

I've been living back in London and working as a picture editor since the autumn, and last week I began work as a freelance with The Independent. Of course, I understand that I've had an unusual life, and I'm used to people's reactions when I tell them about my past life. But today, I'm happy to go for a drink on a Friday night after work in some north London pub - certainly it's preferable to being on the run, armed, paranoid and hunted by special police and secret services, as I was some three decades ago.

The gross nature of the tabloid press is one feature of Britain I will never understand, and I am still baffled by the interest in me. Of course, I understand that people in Britain are sensitive to terrorism, not least in Canary Wharf, which was the site of an IRA bomb in 1996. But I also think that there is currently an anti-German mood in the tabloids in the wake of the Rover fiasco. I suspect that my story touches on both of these hidden elements.

But despite The Wharf's prurient interest I refuse to become a victim, and I would like to set the record straight. What was it like being a Baader-Meinhof member all those years ago? Well, it was not dramatic in the way the press would like to portray it. But it was certainly a remarkable time. I arrived in Berlin in the late 1960s as a 20-year-old photographic student. This was, of course, at the time of the events of May 1968 and the anti-Vietnam demonstrations. Berlin was still isolated then, surrounded by East Germany, and felt very bohemian. I mingled with the "communards" and the artists, as well as the many young men who were avoiding the draft. We took drugs and discussed left wing politics.

I did not really join the Red Army Faction (RAF), as it was then known, as such. I just knew all the leading figures and became part of the movement. I met Andreas Baader in a pub. We took part in demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, and it was after one of these demonstrations, that we placed a fire bomb in Berlin's America House. I had passed my test of courage.

Unlike the drugged communards with whom I'd been hanging out, Andreas Baader and his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin radiated clarity and resolve. Together, we campaigned against the authoritarian regimes in young offender's institutions, and things just developed from there. We were joined by Ulrike Meinhof, a committed critical journalist, and the group later became better known as the Baader-Meinhof gang.

We became immersed in armed revolutionary struggle - and after getting Baader out of prison, became Public Enemies Number One, on the run from the police. We went to Jordan, and had some military training in a Palestinian camp. Later, in Hamburg, I went through a low when my lover left the group. She didn't want to share the "fetishism" of arms any more. I didn't dare think I might or would leave the group too.

But for me it was all short-lived. When the first RAF "wanted" posters were displayed all over the country, a petrol station attendant recognised me. I was arrested in Hamburg in May 1971 and taken to Cologne Prison. My time underground with the RAF had lasted less than a year. The authorities kept me in solitary confinement for many months, in what Ulrike Meinhof later called the "Silent Wing". From my cell I could not hear or see anything. I became haunted by visual and acoustic hallucinations, which led to a breakdown. Finally, in 1974, my trial for bank robbery and attempted murder was adjourned - because the doctors thought I would die if it continued. Afterwards I spent some time recovering on bail in a sanatorium: it was at this point I literally ran away from Germany. I felt I could not exist again in those conditions.

So I came to England. I knew the language and England was quiet, at least compared to Germany at the time. And it saved my life, although I was living here illegally. I was able to make new friends, many of whom I am still close to today.

In the autumn of 1977 I found myself working under a different name in a toy car factory in East London. My workmates addressed me alternatively as "Nazi" or "Baader-Meinhof". On the morning after Gudrun, Andreas and Jan Raspe were found dead in their cells (they were said to have committed suicide, but questions have always remained over their deaths) in Stammheim, my German nature re-emerged. I found myself driving the wrong way up a dual carriageway. I was afraid the police would find me too. And I imagined that, had the story taken a slightly different course, I could have been found dead in Stammheim too.

By 1978 I was working on a youth training scheme in a garage in Camden when the police came to interview some boys about stolen cars. I think a police officer became suspicious of me. Anyway, I was later arrested and spent a year in Brixton prison fighting extradition. But, by then, things had become more liberal in Germany. I think the authorities realised mistakes had been made. Some charges were dropped and I agreed to return to face trial.

I was finally convicted only on the bank robbery charge - and having already served three years in a German and one year in a British jail I was released immediately. As far as the German state is concerned I have now paid my dues. And it is also worth noting that none of the survivors of the Baader-Meinhof group has turned to crime or returned to terrorism. Many are damaged, however.

People do ask me about my time with the RAF and whether I regret it. It's a difficult question to answer. It took me many years, and many painful discussions, to understand why I thought armed revolutionary struggle was not only justified, but necessary. I cannot deny something that shaped me so much in my early years.

Two years ago, I published a photodocumentary book of the period, Baader-Meinhof: Pictures on The Run, 67-77. These pictures tell the story better than I can, and they document probably the most dramatic confrontation in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. When I look at these photographs today I am struck by the youthful power, vitality and unmasked beauty which emanates from faces and bodies, though I was unable to look at some of the pictures for many years.

In the past 30 years, German society, including myself and my former comrades, has undergone a long and difficult process of reflection and Vergangenheitsbewältigung - a word derived from the German necessity to deal with the Holocaust. Many of those involved in the radical politics of that period have gone on to power. The lawyers who defended us were known as the "Terror-lawyers". One of them is now a judge in the constitutional court in Brandenburg, another a Green MP - and Otto Schily is nothing less that the Jack Straw of Germany.

During those years I made my career as a picture editor for Tempo magazine - the German equivalent of The Face - and other magazines, including Spiegel-Special and Wochenpost in Berlin. I wanted to come back to Britain, and though I made one visit in 1989, it was nine years before I could get permission to come back. I like Britain. I think it is a more visual country - look at the Tate Modern and Canary Wharf. When I did come back last Autumn it was mainly for private reasons but as someone whose work is all about visual images I do think Britain excels.

There are many reasons why I choose to live in London, but the British tabloids are not one of them. For them, there is no redemption: once a terrorist, forever a terrorist. I am beginning to feel like part of England's heritage.