German terrorist's brain buried

Meinhof: Founder of the violent Red Army Faction

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BERLIN, Germany -- The brain of Ulrike Meinhof, leader of the notorious German Baader-Meinhof terror gang of the 1970s, has been buried 26 years after her death.

Meinhof hanged herself in prison in 1976 and while her body was buried, her brain was removed for research.

But the university that carried out the study on the organ was forced to return it after Meinhof's twin daughters requested that their mother's brain be cremated and placed in an urn.

It was buried on Thursday at the Berlin cemetery where Meinhof's body was laid to rest, Eckard Maack, a spokesman for prosecutors in Stuttgart, told the Associated Press.

Bettina Roehl, Meinhof's daughter, wrote in the Magdeburger Volksstimme newspaper last month: "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."

Meinhof was considered the intellectual head of the Red Army Faction, a left-wing revolutionary group which waged a campaign of killings, bombings and kidnappings against the establishment in the 1970s and into the 1980s after her death.

The group -- originally known as the Baader-Meinhof gang after Meinhof and co-founder Andreas Baader -- kidnapped business leaders, gunned down police officers and hijacked an airliner.

University of Magdeburg professor Bernhard Bogerts acknowledged he had studied the brain since 1997 to examine whether tumour surgery that Meinhof had in the 1960s may have influenced her behaviour

He said the brain showed signs of damage from the operation.

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