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What really concerns the government is that some radical lawyers pass orders, plots and even weapons between their imprisoned clients and terrorists on the outside. That concern deepened when eleven terrorists in scattered prisons ceased their hunger strikes four days before Industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer was kidnaped last September—presumably to regain strength for their expected release in exchange for Schleyer's freedom. Other radical lawyers have carried more than pamphlets or information into prison. Arndt Müller was accused of smuggling weapons in his briefcase to Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe, who used them to commit suicide after the dramatic rescue last October of Lufthansa passengers held hostage in Mogadishu, Somalia. Siegfried Haag awaits trial in a Bochum prison on charges of carrying weapons to terrorists and of planning a 1975 raid on the West German embassy in Stockholm in which three were killed and 30 wounded.
Still, in Groenewold's case the government appears hard put to prove that he did anything more than maintain the fighting spirit of his clients. Many liberal intellectuals and moderates in Germany agree. They see a great risk that by overkill, antiterrorist laws will jeopardize civil rights. For years, West Germany's post-Nazi constitution and subsequent legislation gave defendants and their lawyers some of the most liberal guarantees anywhere in the world. "It was a wonderful position for the defense counsel," says Heinz Brangsch, executive director of the West German Lawyers Association. "Then came terrorism and a breakdown of our position." When the terrorists came to trial, radical lawyers manipulated the liberal rules to protract proceedings, turning them into politicized circuses. Unlike William Kunstler and other radical American lawyers, they did not even have to worry about contempt citations; none exist under German law.
As the terrorist problem grew, the government began changing the rules. In 1974 the parliament in Bonn adopted a law permitting the exclusion of defense counsel if he or she were suspected of participating with the defendants in their criminal acts or obstructing justice. Last year, after Schleyer's kidnaping, parliament enacted a "contact ban," permitting courts to cut off terrorist prisoners from all outside communication—including their lawyers under certain circumstances. Last week the Bundestag passed new antiterror rules that would further restrict the rights of defendants and their attorneys. Among them: placing a physical barrier between a lawyer and his client during consultations to prevent weapons smuggling and permitting the court to monitor the mail between lawyer and client when criminal activity is suspected.
The obvious-problem, say civil libertarians, is that laws specifically designed for the Baader-Meinhof lawyers have universal application. Indeed, a prosecutor tried to apply a section of the so-called Lex Baader-Meinhof to a lawyer in an ordinary extortion and robbery case in Cologne before it was applied to radical lawyers, prompting an appeals court, which denied the exclusion, to warn against using it as a "handy disciplinary measure."