The news weekly Der Spiegelreported in an issue to be published Monday that it had evidence which allegedly showed that an ex-member of the Red Army Faction guerrilla group, Stefan Wisniewski, had shot and killed chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback.
The murder, which was never solved, had long been blamed in part on fellow RAF radical Christian Klar, who recently lodged a plea for clemency with President Horst Köhler after more than 24 years in prison.
Klar was arrested in 1982 and jailed for his role in multiple murders. His sentence stipulates that he will not be eligible for parole until 2009, unless he is pardoned first.
Buback became the first victim of a bloody era dubbed the "German Autumn" of 1977 when he was shot in his Mercedes car by a RAF gunman on a motorcycle in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe.
Old news for German officials?
Der Spiegelreported that former RAF member Verena Becker had told German authorities in the early 1980s that Wisniewski had slain Buback, and it quoted another RAF militant, Peter-Jürgen Boock, as now confirming that claim.
They said Klar had merely driven the get-away car.
Wisniewski was released in 1999 after 21 years in prison for other RAF murders. Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung meanwhile reported that there was no evidence linking Wisniewski to the Buback murder.
