BERLIN — One of Germany’s most notorious convicted terrorists was told yesterday that she is to be released from prison after 24 years, provoking condemnation from the relatives of her victims and politicians. Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, was convicted of nine murders while acting as a leader of the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, which terrorized Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.

Dirk Schleyer, whose father Hanns-Martin Schleyer was murdered by a group led by Ms. Mohnhaupt in 1977, said he was furious at a decision that was “simply not justifiable.” The victim’s widow, Waltrude, said she was “appalled.”

The kidnap and murder of Mr. Schleyer, the head of the German employers’ federation, was the highest-profile act in the “German Autumn” of 1977, which saw attacks by the anti-capitalist group reach a peak.

Ms. Mohnhaupt was given five life sentences plus a further 15 years for her crimes, longer than many of those convicted at the Nuremberg trials. She has never expressed remorse and, unlike some of her comrades, has never given an interview or written a book.

The judge at the High Court in Stuttgart, where Ms. Mohnhaupt was convicted in 1985, stressed that her release was not a pardon but based on the legal argument that she posed no further threat to public safety.

The Bavarian interior minister, Gunther Beckstein, said: “It leaves a clear feeling of unease that, with this decision, a serious criminal will be freed who has never regretted her crimes and has done nothing to help completely explain them [nor] … shared her information about others involved.”

Ms. Mohnhaupt will be released on probation on March 27 and is said to have been offered work and accommodation by a member of her extended family.

A former member of the Nazi Party and the head of the German employers’ federation, Hanns-Martin Schleyer, was snatched from his car in Cologne in an attempt to blackmail the government into releasing imprisoned Baader-Meinhof terrorists.

Several weeks later, Arab sympathizers hijacked a plane to put pressure on Germany to release captured members of the group.

The plane landed in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, where it was stormed by a German anti-terrorist unit, leaving all but one of the hostage-takers dead. The following day, Mr. Schleyer was found shot dead in the trunk of a car in France.