Knut Folkerts

Knut Detlef Folkerts (born January 1, 1952 in Singen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) is a former member of the terrorist group, the Red Army Faction (RAF).

In 1977 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the Netherlands for murder. Later he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in West Germany for crimes including the murder of public prosecutor Siegfried Buback: however he was then released from prison in 1995 when doubts were raised about the reliability of the original conviction in Germany.

Folkerts was sentenced in a Frankfurt court together with Willy-Peter Stollfor the robbery of an firearms business on July 1, 1977. In an interview in 2007 he denied any involvement, however.

On September 22, 1977 Folkerts and Elisabeth von Dyck set out to return a car to a Dutch car rental business. The car had been rented by Sigrid Sternebeck and used in connection with the kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer. The surroundings were under surveillance and the police tried to arrest Folkerts. Folkerts fatally shot Dutch policeman Arie Kranenburg (born June 10, 1931) and seriously wounded a second officer. Folkerts was arrested, Elisabeth von Dyck, originally mistaken for Brigitte Mohnhaupt, managed to escape.

Folkerts later claimed that the German authorities had offered him a new identity in the USA and one million Deutschmarks if he agreed to betray the hiding place of Hanns Martin Schleyer.

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