German professor acknowledges examining terrorist's brain

BERLIN -- A German professor who examined the brain of a Red Army Faction leader said Tuesday it showed signs of damage from an operation for a tumor. He said the surgery altered Ulrike Meinhof's behavior and may have caused her to turn to terrorism.

Bernhard Bogerts, director of the psychiatric clinic at the University of Magdeburg, confirmed that he carried out the research on Meinhof's brain over the last five years.

His involvement came to light last week when one of Meinhof's daughters published an article saying her mother's brain had been secretly preserved after she hanged herself in 1976.

Both daughters have gone to prosecutors in Stuttgart, seeking to have the brain buried with their mother's remains in Berlin.

Meinhof was considered the intellectual head of the Red Army Faction, a left-wing revolutionary group that spread fear across West Germany in the 1970s and into the '80s.

Bogerts told a news conference in Magdeburg that he was given the brain five years ago by a pathologist in the southwestern German city of Tuebingen.

Meinhof was "significantly influenced by abnormal alterations to the brain" as a result of a 1962 operation for a brain tumor, causing increased aggressiveness in her final years, Bogerts said.

"The slide into terror can be explained by the brain illness," he said.

Meinhof's daughter claims the finding raises doubts about whether her mother was legally responsible for her actions. Ulrike Meinhof, originally a journalist, was awaiting trial when she killed herself at age 41.