the comrade who had collected the girls from the Bremen apartment where they had been sent before the operation to free Baader reached it denouement), and drove with the children through France and Italy to the "barracks camp" on the side of Mount Etna which had originally been constructed as emergency accommodation for people made homeless by a volcanic eruption, and where now Andreas Baader and other comrades were hiding. The stay in Sicily was brief. Berberich and others involved in Baader's escape moved on to Jordan. They spent most of the summer of 1970 undergoing quasi-military training at a PLO-Fatah camp along the Jordan-Syria border. In September the group returned to West Germany and began stockpiling weapons. Berberich continued to support the "logistical expansion" of the Red Army Faction (RAF). For those involved the group's political objectives were both idealistic and necessary, and that provided ample justification for illegality. They idealised their criminal actions because they thought there was no other way to "wake people up". Even among the most effective of radical left-wing journalists, there were those who believed that simply writing about the issues could no longer change anything. But for the RAF there was still a necessity somehow to fund their activities: Berberich was involved in several bank raids. On 8 October 1970 Monika Berberich went to visit some friends at Knesebeckstraße 89 in West Berlin. The police were arresting her comrades when she arrived. She later recalled that the police did not have her "on their list. They were really surprised when I came in". They nevertheless now arrested Berberich, together with Horst Mahler, Irene Goergens, Ingrid Schubert and Brigitte Asdonk. With the exception of Asdonk, the police determined that all those arrested were carrying loaded weapons. The court subsequently convicted her because it determined that she had been involved in a bank raid, and had rented a couple of cars and an apartment [for use in connection with terrorism], while wearing a crookedly fixed wig. She was found guilty of "supporting a criminal association" ("Unterstützung einer kriminellen Vereinigung") and taking part in the freeing of Andreas Baader. She received (initially) a twelve-year prison sentence. This, reportedly, was two years longer than her female co-defendants because of her intelligence and legal training which persuaded the court that she was particularly dangerous. On 4 July 1976 Monika Berberich, together with Gabriele Rollnik, Juliane Plambeck and Inge