Christian Klar, a former leader of the Red Army Faction, who has spent 26 years in prison for killings that shook Germany in the 1970s, will be released on parole, a court has ruled.
Klar was convicted in 1985 of involvement in 20 murders and attempted murders, including the deaths of several senior German industry figures and public officials.
The 56-year old is to be released on parole in January after serving the minimum term for a life sentence, the court in the southwestern city of Stuttgart said in a statement on Monday.
"A major consideration was the question whether it could be feared that Christian Klar would commit significant criminal acts again. The senate's answer to this was no," the court statement said.
The Red Army Faction, which was also known as the 'Baader-Meinhof gang' after founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, was an extreme left-wing movement which grew out of the student protests and anti-Vietnam war movements in the west Germany of the late 1960s.
The group is believed to have killed 34 people between 1970 and 1991, before disbanding ten years ago.
Request for pardon
Klar's case triggered a heated debate last year when Horst Koehler, Germany's president, considered a request to pardon him.
The debate pitted politicians who said the killer had done his time and no longer posed a threat to society against those who argued that a murderer who had never showed regret for his actions deserved no pardon.
Klar has been in prison since 1982 and was convicted in 1985 of nine murders and 11 counts of attempted murder.
Among the killings he was convicted of being involved in were those of Hanns Martin Schleyer, the chief of Germany's employers' federation, and Juergen Ponto, the head of Dresdner bank, both killed during the bloody 'German autumn' of 1977.
The role of the Red Army Faction has sparked both horror and fascination in Germany and inspired dozens of books and documentaries.
This year's film, The Baader Meinhof Complex, proved a box office hit in Germany and has been picked as an entry for best foreign language film at the 2009 Academy Awards.