GERMANY: International alarm at "anti-terrorist" prosecutions
01 March 2001
"Political provision" in the Criminal Code used to try and control extra-parliamentary activity
In the wake of the prosecution of six men and women on grounds of “membership of a terrorist organisation”, anti?terrorist legislation in Germany as well as the conduct of the trial, has been strongly criticised by a wide range of national and international civil liberties groups. On the basis of evidence given by a single witness, obtained under the much criticised crown witness regulation, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (Bundesanwaltschaft, BAW) is re?opening Germany's history of anti?imperialist/anti?racist struggles and using police methods and security precautions reminiscent of the “terrorist” heyday of the 1970s (see Statewatch vol 10 no 1).
Most of the charges relating to specific incidents (physical attacks as opposed to vague allegations of “membership of a terrorist organisation”) have passed their limitation period and are now statute?barred crimes. Moreover, the “terrorist” organisation in question, the Revolutionäre Zellen/Rote Zora, which was active in Germany for almost 20 years, declared its dissolution almost ten years ago.
Inconsistencies in the evidence to the trial and the lengthy remand periods the accused have served, together with what is seen as the politically motivated nature of the prosecution, has led to renewed demands by extra?parliamentary groups and MPs to abolish §129/129a of the German Criminal Code. This is an anti?terrorist provision which, after the dissolution of Germany's armed resistance movements in the 1980s, has been almost exclusively applied to extra?parliamentary pressure groups such as the anti?nuclear movement, peace campaigns, animal rights groups and squatters, and in particular to the anti?racist and anti?fascist movements.
Background
The Berlin court case sees Harald Glöde, Axel Haug, Sabine Eckle, Matthias Borgmann, Lothar Ebke and Rudolf Schindler on trial for membership of the “terrorist organisation Revolutionäre Zellen” and for allegedly participating in various bomb attacks. The charges need to be understood in the context of long?standing attempts by the BAW and the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt ? BKA) to prosecute active members of the Revolutionäre Zellen (RZ), which conducted attacks against several institutions and individuals between 1973 and the late 1980s. The RZ defined their actions as anti?imperialist and anti?Zionist and also had a militant feminist section. Their targets ranged from the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe (for its role in the anti?abortion law) and the OPEC conference in Vienna in 1975 (in support of the Palestinian struggle), to bomb attacks on German Aliens Offices and individuals held responsible for the curtailment of asylum rights. Germany's racist Ausländerpolitik (foreigner politics) were the main target of the RZ's anti?imperialist struggle from the mid 1980s onwards. Unlike the trials of Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) members, every attempted prosecution of alleged RZ members has been unsuccessful.
In 1998 public prosecutors in Germany started to actively pursue Germany's unsolved history of militant resistance with the arrest of Hans?Joachim Klein in France in September 1998. Klein was extradited to Germany in May 1999, and gave evidence under the Kronzeugenregelung (crown witness regulation). This allows lighter sentences under its witness protection programme, for those charged with serious offences, if they gave evidence against former colleagues. Klein named Schindler, amongst others, and both were tried in a regional court in Frankfurt last year. Klein was convicted for his part in the bombing of the OPEC conference in Vienna in 1975, but Schindler was cleared of all charges. The court decided that it “could not verify” Schindler's involvement in the attack based on Klein's evidence.
After Schindler was cleared the BAW challenged the judgement and attempted to retry him for<