Berlin-Zehlendorf
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Opposition demands clarification from Müller because of illegal LKA use
05/14/21 | 7:40 pm
The governing mayor of Berlin took legal action against a woman from Zehlendorf because of a Facebook posting. The LKA then searched her apartment – wrongly. CDU and FDP now want to know: Has Michael Müller abused his office?
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A criminal complaint made personally by him threatens to have repercussions for Berlin’s Governing Mayor Michael Müller (SPD). The reason is an enforced search warrant in the apartment of a Berliner – triggered by Müller’s application to the public prosecutor. But the Berlin Regional Court declared the search illegal, as the newspaper did “World” [welt.de/Bezahlinhalt] reported on Thursday.
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In the House of Representatives, the opposition is now wondering whether Müller could have abused his office. “It seems that Michael Müller has used his position as governing mayor to directly initiate investigations with the head of the Berlin public prosecutor’s office bypassing the normal procedural route,” said Holger Krestel, legal policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, on Friday .
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CDU politician wants “parliamentary review”
His party has therefore requested a separate discussion point on the case for the meeting of the legal committee next Wednesday, said Krestel rbb | 24. In addition, the FDP had asked for the “personal presence” of the governing mayor. Sven Rissmann, legal policy spokesman for the CDU parliamentary group, also took the media report as an opportunity and said on Friday that the case had to be “examined by parliament”.
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Personal criminal application to the senior public prosecutor
According to the “Welt” report, on April 16, 2019, Müller personally filed a criminal complaint with the Chief Public Prosecutor in Berlin, Jörg Raupach. The application was directed against a woman who at the time only knew Müller by an alias that she used on the Internet.
A few days after Müller’s demand for a criminal investigation, the authority came to the conclusion that further investigations were justified because of “defamation and defamation”. The “Welt” reported a “record-breaking speed with the initiation of the procedure”.
In the course of the investigation, the woman’s real identity finally came out, according to the report – the officers searched her home after an investigating judge issued a search warrant.
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The trigger was a Facebook posting
The background to Müller’s complaint was therefore a posting on Facebook. In a fake photo, Müller could be seen with a white sign. The sign read “All to #Berlin”, which suggested that the SPD politician was bringing boat refugees to Berlin.
As the report goes on to say, the woman in her apartment in Zehlendorf was woken up by the criminal police shortly after six in the morning and her apartment was searched. To this day she suffers from sleep disorders because of the action.
Around eight months later, the Berlin Regional Court declared the action to be unlawful, stating that the posting on Facebook was an expression of a simple expression of opinion.
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A review of the case is necessary, says CDU politician Rissmann. “This is all the more true because, according to the statements that have become public, the action was evidently at a record pace that one would otherwise wish for serious crimes. Was there any political pressure or influence from the Justice Senator?”
It is still unclear whether Müller will face the opposition’s questions at the next meeting of the Legal Affairs Committee. The Senate Chancellery could not be reached on Friday to comment.
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