The final spurt in the Halle trial: the taking of evidence was completed on November 18th. In his plea, the federal prosecutor calls for the highest penalty for the right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic assassin: life imprisonment. A judgment is expected before Christmas. On December 1, 2020, the 22nd day of the trial, the accessory prosecution can now take the floor. Several days are planned for this: the 43 admitted joint plaintiffs are represented by 21 lawyers. Today the Federal Prosecutor General is being sharply criticized in their closing speeches. The police are not doing well either.
First, the lawyer Christian Eifler takes a seat at the lectern. He represents the mother of Kevin S., who was shot by the defendant * during his lunch break in the “Kiez-Döner”. His client made it to the trial for the first time in four months today, and she is not feeling well psychologically, he reports. And that’s the culprit. Eifler also has to pull himself together while he is giving his lecture. He sighs, inhales and exhales deeply, looking emotionally charged as he stares the defendant straight in the face. The attorney Erkan Görgülü, who represents Kevin S.’s father, will then speak. He reports that despite his disability, S. fought to integrate himself into life, to find a job and to survive contrary to medical assessments. The accused had shown that one does not have to be a Jew or a foreigner to be affected by right-wing terror: “That affects us all.” In conclusion, Görgülü quotes Kevin S. ‘ last words before he died: “No, please don’t. Please do not. No. Please, please don’t. No Please not”. Silence in the courtroom, some of those present cry.
Abandoned
After a 20-minute ventilation break, the lawyer Onur Özata makes his plea. He represents the brothers İsmet and Rıfat Tekin, who run the “Kiez-Döner” snack bar. His client İsmet took part in every day of the trial, he listened to every witness, while his brother Rıfat held the position in the kebab shop, says Özata. Through the process, the two brothers became different people. The deed has changed your view of Germany: You are originally from south-eastern Turkey and work hard every day to ensure a better life for your children in Germany. “However, my clients often feel abandoned by this state. Wherever the state should have shown solidarity, it only shrugged its shoulders ”. Finally, Özata quotes the Polish author Zofia Nałkowska, who wrote about the Shoah: “That is what people did to people”. Özata wants to reject pathologizing the perpetrator and instead emphasize: He is not a monster, not a psychopath, but a person who carried out this cruel attack.
Then İsmet Tekin has the floor. He criticizes the Attorney General – and he will not be the last to do that on that day. He asks why the attack on him is not counted as attempted murder, asks how it could be said that the accused would not have wanted to kill him with a targeted attack. For more than a year, Tekin has suffered from nightmares in which the accused tried to kill him. “If police officers with 30 years of experience and protective vests are traumatized by this operation, what does that mean for us co-plaintiffs?”, He says at the end.
The lawyer Ilil Friedmann also finds sharp words for the Federal Attorney General, who still regards the car attack on her client Aftax Ibrahim as merely a traffic offense and negligent bodily harm, not murder. The Federal Public Prosecutor’s decision was absurd and incomprehensible, said Friedmann. For her, the motive is clear: It is about a racist attempted murder, because the accused wanted to run over her client because of the color of his skin. Ibrahim is still suffering from the attack today: he is in pain when he is sitting or playing football. He doesn’t feel like leaving his apartment and is afraid of meeting people. He also suffers from insomnia and difficulty concentrating – typical symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s why he wants to move away from Halle.
After another pause for ventilation, the lawyer Kristin Pietrzyk, who represents three clients, wants to shed light on one aspect of the attack in her final lecture: the character of the deed as a social interaction among those absent. By this, Pietrzyk means the context of the attack as part of a series of similar right-wing extremist acts around the world from Christchurch to El Paso, which can be traced back to imageboards and online communities. “We don’t hear the accused sing the Horst Wessel song, we don’t see him pose with his comrades in front of a swastika flag, he doesn’t go on torchlight marches. But he wasn’t a lone perpetrator. ”In addition to the stable comradeships and right-wing extremist parties, there is a new virtual structure on image boards.
Resist the beginnings? We are right in the middle
The online expert Karolin Schwarz, who testified at the beginning of November, understood that: Pietrzyk praised Schwarz as an expert who, unlike the BKA, was able to bring this virtual world closer to the courtroom. Pietrzyk makes it clear where myths like “The Great Exchange” and a “Jewish World Conspiracy”, which find many followers in these online communities, lead: “Conspiracy theories include extermination fantasies,” she says. In 2019 alone, four such attacks were announced on image boards, in which 78 people were killed, said Pietrzyk. The accused is an experienced user of these online communities who knows and uses their codes.
In his “Pre-Action Report” he does not need to explain his ideology in detail. Keywords and phrases were sufficient to show the addressees that they belonged to them. His goal: to enable more imageboard users to commit similar acts, but also to take a place in a long line of similar murderers. In court, too, he turned to this online audience, wanting to use the process as a stage. The BKA did not understand this, but fortunately some media had refrained from naming the defendant by name and photographing him and thus giving him a platform. At the end Pietrzyk reads out the names of the victims of the attacks in Halle and Hanau and says: “A fight against the beginnings is no longer enough. We are right in the middle. As my client says: The bullet is still in the gun. “The cartridge is still in the gun.
In her closing lecture, lawyer Kati Lang also praised the fact that the defendant did not succeed in turning the trial into a stage for his inhumane ideology. Because part of the media at least followed the joint declaration of the secondary prosecution at the beginning of the trial that the perpetrator was neither named nor portrayed: “The accused uses all means available to him to his advantage,” says Lang. He is silent about some of the data found on his hard drives, but at the same time gives the impression that some things should be found. He said a lot about his undisguised anti-Semitism, but when it came to his family, he was mute again.
However, Lang comments critically on other aspects of the media coverage of the trial: The synagogue’s good German oak door, which was made by a good German craftsman, was always mentioned: “This process must not become the stage for good Germany. Because he is not good for that ”. Nevertheless, she considers it positive that those affected have had their say in the process. And although the process led to immeasurable suffering, it also created alliances of solidarity, from the synagogue to the Kiez kebab and beyond. The defendant was unable to eradicate those affected. Instead, they are indivisible. Because one thing helps against the self-made weapons of the assassin: solidarity.
The pleadings of the accessory prosecution will continue on December 2nd and 8th. A verdict is expected by December 22nd.
* At the beginning of the trial, a group of joint plaintiffs released a joint statement, in which they asked media representatives not to reveal the name of the assassin in order to deny him a platform. We have respected that wish in this article.
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