The Red Army Faction (RAF; German: Rote Armee Fraktion), in its early stages commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group (or Baader-Meinhof Gang; ), was a West German far-left militant group. The RAF was founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, and Ulrike Meinhof. The West German government considered the Red Army Faction to be a terrorist organization.