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bay0094 4 vm 234 lby 7259 Trials/Crime/
Erlangen/Dresden (dpa/lby) – In the context of the Dresden trial in the murder of the Egyptian Marwa El-Sherbini, the justice system has now set its sights on the Erlangen media researcher Sabine Schiffer. The Erlangen Amtsgericht [Municipal Court] issued a summary penalty order against the media researcher in the amount of 6,000 euros (60 daily salary units at 100 euros each) for slander, a court spokesperson reported in response to questions on Wednesday. In a radio interview, Schiffer allegedly falsely accused a police officer of shooting at the Egyptian woman’s husband, who had come to her aid, for racist reasons, according to the court’s opinion.
The court sees no evidence of this.
Rather, in the court’s view, the officer, who came running from the adjacent courtroom saw the husband as the more active one of the two struggling men and short at him rather than the actual perpetrator for this reason. “He had the feeling that he had to end the whole thing somehow,” said the court spokesperson. In the case in question, a German of Russian descent had killed the Egyptian woman in a Dresden courtroom on 1 July.
According to the court spokesperson, Schiffer filed an objection to the penalty order. The case will be tried in open court. The media researcher relies on her right to free speech. A media researcher and independent observer must be allowed, she says, to express all observations and considerations publicly that may, in her view, contribute to understanding this horrible tragedy. Defamation-by-insult charges, she says, must not be allowed to be used to intimidate those who express unpopular views.
[Amtsgericht Erlangen]: Mozartstraße 23, Erlangen
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301712 Dez 09
5 January 2010, by Hilal Sezgin
Between Christmas and New Year’s, when the aftertaste of the holidays had yet to dissipate and newspaper editorial offices were thinly staffed, the German justice system decided to wash some dirty laundry. Using the fast cycle. The Dresden Office of Public Prosecution terminated its investigation after a police officer, the presiding judge of the Superior Court [Landgericht], and a judge were charged with various offences, including negligent assault. Despite the seriousness of the accusations and the complicated background, there will be no trial, if it is up to the Office of Public Prosecutions. Thus, the public will never be able to have a full understanding of what happened on 1 July in Dresden, and whether it could have been prevented.
On 1 July 2002, the Egyptian Marwa el-Sherbini was stabbed to death in the Dresden Landgericht. A man called Alex Wiens had smeared her – a veiled Muslim woman – as a terrorist one year prior. Third parties called the police, Wiens was convicted of defamation-by-insult and sentenced to a fine, and both Wiens and the Office of Public Prosecution appealed the decision. This led to a new trial in July, in which Wiens murdered el-Sherbini, and to a third trial in Fall 2009, in which he was ultimately convicted of this murder.
Although the proceedings on 1 July concerned the appeal of a defendant with an “incorrible racist attitude” (in the words of the OPP), who had described Muslims in a prior letter to the Amtsgericht as “monsters” and “enemies” (in the words of Wiens), he was not even checked for weapons before entering the courthouse. No police officers were present for the proceedings; they had to be called by pressing an alarm button, and entered the courtroom when el-Sherbini’s husband had already come to her aid and was wrestling with Wiens to get the knife. One of the officers shot the husband, not the perpetrator.
According to the OPP, there was no negligence because the officer only had "a few seconds to intervene in the highly dramatic, and also quite confusing incident”. This may be true. However, it is cynical, then, to claim that “the alarm system installed in the courthouse” was “not at all defective, but rather quite effective, as demonstrated by the rapid reaction of the courthouse police officers to the alarm.” An emergency alarm system that puts security officers in situations that end with the death of a witness can be called many things. But not “effective”.
Equally unconvincing is the OPP’s claim, repeated like a mantra, that the defendant had shown great discipline, at least, until he pulled the knife. His hate mail, according to OPP, was in the court’s possession even before the first trial, which went without incident. Is this a reason to clear the court of accusations that inadequate care was taken? Hardly. It seems more likely that it was pure luck that Wien’s hatred did not already result in violence at the first trial. Unfortunately, the court – and especially Marwa el-Sherbini - was not so lucky in the later proceedings.
It is tragic enough that she fell victim to anti-Muslim hatred in a packed courtroom. It is not an adequate response to this tragedy for representatives of the justice system to be cleared of wrongdoing by colleagues close to them. Even if the matter was handled properly in a technical sense: A court in which a murder occurs must be called to account in public, regular proceedings. El-Sherbini’s surviving family members now wish to take the case as far as the European Court of Justice in order to compel proceedings to be opened against the Dresden court. Nor does such a swift end to the inquiry at year’s end fulfill the public’s legitimate wish for transparency and impartiality.
6. January 2010, by Hilal Sezgin
Dresden Trial: Penalty Order against Critical Media Researcher
The Dresden murder trial and its aftermath have been getting curiouser and curiouser. After the Egyptian Marwa el-Sherbini was stabbed to death on 1 July by a xenophobe, questions have repeatedly been raised about how it could have happened. Why wasn’t the murderer checked for weapons, even though, according to the news magazine Focus, he had declared in his first interrogation: “If I had weapons or explosives, I would have brought them along" ? Why did the police officer who responded to the alarm shoot not at the perpetrator but - even if this was accidental - at the leg of the victim's husband? And could el-Sherbini have been saved if the police officer had not made this error and prevented her husband from rendering aid?
No light has been shed on these issues, and so it will remain, since the Dresden OPP terminated the inquiries into the police officer and the Dresden judges at year's end (see 1 Jan. issue of Berliner Zeitung). On the other hand, the Nuremberg-Fürth OPP initiated new inquiries: Islam and media researcher Sabine Schiffer, who had repeatedly and vocally asked the above questions, received a summary penalty order last week. She is threatened with a fine in the amount of 6,000 Euros or two months’ imprisonment for insulting or degrading the police officer who fired the erroneous shot. In several interviews on the murder of el-Sherbini, Schiffer expressed the suspicion that there could be a racist subtext to the erroneous shooting. In an interview with an Iranian radio station, she used the word “certainly” – and it is this “certainly” that prosecutors are relying on.
Images in the Collective Consciousness
When abridged in this way, Schiffer's statement seems quite bold. However, it seems less so if one listens to her interviews in their entirety, but even so: Scientists and researchers exist to develop theories, occasionally bold ones. No one disputes that the police officer’s shooting of the victim’s husband was the result of a tragic error. No one suggests that it was the result of malice; even Schiffer explained in a statement that her supposition was “an attempt at an explanation based on the unconscious effects of media portrayals.” In this regard, she mentions stereotypical portrayals of Muslims as violent criminals and terrorists, and continues: "Therefore, it is an acceptable assumption that these images, which have taken root in the collective consciousness, may bring about a spontaneous mistake in a situation where there is no time for calm deliberation and objective examination of the facts. Thus, it was never my intention to accuse the police officer of a fundamentally racist attitude or of acting intentionally.”
As the English would say: fair enough. Studies, particularly in the US, show that police officers in particular are not immune to such errors, especially when their daily work teaches them to categorise potential offenders based on external ethnic characteristics. This may or may not be true of the Dresden police officer. But those who carry weapons must accept critical questions when their use of those weapons – however tragically – leads to severe injuries. Asking such questions is the core responsibility of journalists and others working in the media. No matter how unpleasant the hypotheses are presented to the public are, they are not slander. Rather, they are an exercise of the right to freedom of speech. It is not least the unhindered exercise of this right that ensures that our justice system can be seen as impartial, independent, and incorruptible, and the state’s monopoly on force can be seen as justifiable.
Open Questions Remain about the Murder of Marwa El-Sherbini
6. January 2010, by Peter Kleinert
Between Christmas and New Year’s, NRhZ writer Dr. Sabine Schiffer, head of the Institut für Medienverantwortung [Institute for Media Responsibility] in Erlangen, received a summary penalty order threatening two months’ imprisonment. She is accused of criminally slandering the police officer who was alerted during the murder of Egyptian-born Marwa El-Sherbini (31) on July 1, 2009 in the Dresden Superior Court [Landgericht]. Upon arriving at the scene, the officer shot at El-Sherbini’s husband, who had come to her aid, rather than at Alexander Wiens, the Muslim-baiter she had taken to court. - Ed.
In an NRhZ article dated July 8, 2009, Sabine Schiffer expressed her dismay not only at the murder, but also at “the way the anti-Islamic knife attack in Dresden has been reported on”: “Terms like “anti-immigrant” or “racist” are used in an attempt to talk around the fact that the anti-Islamic agitation that we have observed for 30 years now and warned of for several years has reached a new level. It is clear not only from the crime itself, but also from the fact that the victim’s husband – and not the actual murderer – was shot at by a police officer, that the work done thus far to encourage objectivity in discussions of Islam and Muslims are nowhere near enough. An expert opinion should be obtained as to whether this was due to her husband’s appearance. Instead of sounding an alarm in their role as the Fourth Estate, the media have preferred to stick to crime reporting as usual – he’s a Russian German, so he’s not our problem.”[1]
While the Fourth Estate hardly reacted, the Third – the justice system – did react, after Sabine Schiffer also remarked in an interview with the Iranian radio station IRIB that there could have been a racist subtext to the fact that the husband of the murdered, veiled pharmacist was mistaken for the perpetrator. In a press release dated August 7, 2009, she went into more detail:
“My suggestion that the police officer might have taken aim at the victim’s husband, rather than the real attacker, for racist reasons is an attempt at an explanation based on the unconscious effects of media portrayals. When the media, time and again, paint a blanket picture of people of Arab descent as potential violent criminals, terrorists, or “honor killers," these media portrayals can influence media consumers subconsciously and affect their actual behavior in high-pressure situations. For years, there has been a constant stream of media portrayals – both in reporting and in entertainment – of Muslims and people of Arab descent. This is undisputed. Therefore, it is an acceptable assumption that these images, which have taken root in the collective consciousness, may bring about a spontaneous mistake as to possible perpetrators and victims in a situation where there is no time for calm deliberation and objective examination of the facts. Thus, it was never my intention to accuse the police officer of a fundamentally racist attitude or of acting intentionally. I wished merely to note the consequences of media portrayals and admonish society as a whole to take on the task of educating the public about such racist misinterpretations and the way in which they are promoted both by media portrayals and political discourse.“ [2]
All Proceedings Terminated
Nonetheless, Sabine Schiffer received a summary penalty order, dated December 29, 2009, from the Erlangen Municipal Court [Amtsgericht] threatening a fine of 6,000 euros or two months’ imprisonment because her “false claim – with regard to the police officer’s motives – is capable of subjecting him to opprobrium and to disparage him in public opinion.” [3] The "Third Estate” terminated the investigation of the police officer for possible misconduct in firing at the husband of the woman who was stabbed 18 times and murdered in the courtroom. And a criminal complaint for a series of hate e-mails started by an article published on the website Politically Incorrect[4], some of which openly threatened violence, was dismissed by the justice system. Allegedly, it was not properly phrased.
Strangely, the Third Estate did not investigate whether the Dresden justice system failed to fulfill its duty to take adequate security measures in relation to the murder of the witness Marwa El-Sherbini; instead, it terminated an investigation against the trial judge and the presiding judge. Reports in Focus on July 13, 2009 [5] and Süddeutsche Zeitung on October 28, 2009 [6] on statements by the murderer, Alexander Wiens, prior to the killing suggest that, according to the minutes of the proceeding, he made the following statement (transcribed verbatim) to the judge: “I don’t think it’s OK that these monsters weren’t kicked out after 9/11.” And, long before the hearing at the Landgericht, he described Islam as a “crazy, dangerous religion” in a hate letter to the Amtsgericht - the court of first instance – during the criminal slander proceedings initiated by Marwa El-Sherbini. According to him, all adherents to Islam were “Islamists” who want to “change Germany to fit their their own crazy ideas.”
At Least the Possibility of Negligence Should be Examined
On this matter, Sabine Schiffer remarked: “No indications? Nothing that could have led those responsible at the court to at least take away the defendant’s backpack? Nothing that could have led someone responsible to at least hold the proceedings in an appropriate courtroom, where the hate-filled defendant would not have stood less than two meters away from the witness? Of course, no one would claim that it was intentional, but at least the possibility of negligence should be examined. Of course, no one wanted this, and the shock of those responsible at the court was certainly genuine – but that should not prevent critical self-reflection about omissions that cannot be allowed to happen again.
If no one is responsible for this, whose duty is it to guarantee safety in a courthouse? Can I even go in there as a defendant without requesting police protection? Though that would not have helped Marwa El-Sherbini at all, since she was not a defendant and probably would have had difficulties obtaining police protection as a witness. But did she even know what Wiens said? That would have allowed her to consider whether she might prefer to insist that her first, unchanged statement be read into the record in order not to expose herself to danger."
Unsuccessful Intimidation Tactics
Given that the court was aware, according to SZ and Focus, that the perpetrator was potentially dangerous, it might have made more sense for the police officer, who was alerted too late and possibly completely overwhelmed, to file charges against the judges that had put him in this situation and withdraw his slander complaint against Sabine Schiffer. But his complaint was apparently just what the “Third Estate” was hoping for. The summary penalty order allowed it to forbid the independent observer and commentator – despite her constitutional right to free speech – making any public statement about what she believed would contribute to the investigation of the horrible tragedy in Dresden until further notice. However, Sabine Schiffer was not intimidated. She filed an objection to the summary order and is now waiting impatiently to see how the proceedings progress. (PK)
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[1]http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=13987
[2]http://www.medienverantwortung.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/20090807_IMV_Schiffer_DresdnerMordfall-Klarstellung1.pdf
[3]http://www.medienverantwortung.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/20091102_Amtsgericht-ER_2.jpg
[4]http://www.medienverantwortung.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/20090716_Pi-Aussch_12.pdf
[5]http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/rassismus-monster-rausschmeissen_aid_416034.html
[6]http://archiv.sueddeutsche.de/f5O389/3119363/Hassbrief-an-das-Gericht.html
For further information, see Medienverantwortung.de
search terms: “der Prozess”, “Interviews”, and “Pressemitteilungen”.
By Liz Fekete
23 February 2010, 12:00pm
In Germany, an anti-racist academic faces prosecution for questioning whether court negligence could have been a contributory factor in the case of Marwa al-Sherbini, who was stabbed to death in a Dresden courtroom in July 2009.
Some of Germany's foremost academics, journalists, peace campaigners, trades unionists and politicians have formed the Action Group Against Racism and for Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom (Aktionsbündnis gegen Rassismus und für Meinungs-und Wissenschaftsfreiheit). The Alliance is concerned about the implications for academic freedom posed by the prosecution of Dr Sabine Schiffer, Director of the Institute for Media Responsibility in Erlangen. Dr Schiffer is accused of slandering a police officer; she has been summonsed to appear before Erlangen Municipal Court on 24 March and, if convicted, could face a 6,000 Euros fine or two months imprisonment.
Marwa al-Sherbini: the questions continue
Marwa al-Sherbini, a 31-year-old pharmacist from Egypt, was three months pregnant when she was murdered by Alexandre Wiens, a German citizen of Russian descent, who was known to be a xenophobe and neo-nazi sympathiser. Marwa al-Sherbini was appearing as a witness against Wiens in a case that arose from an incident in a local playground in which he racially abused her and called her an 'Islamist whore' on account of wearing the headscarf. She was giving her testimony in the Dresden Superior Court when Wiens lept up and stabbed her sixteen times, shouting 'you have no right to live'. In the chaos that followed, Marwa al-Sherbini's husband, Elwi Ali Oka was shot and seriously wounded by a police officer who mistook him for the assailant. The officer was initially suspended but an internal police inquiry cleared him of any wrongdoing. It is this police officer who has launched the action against Dr Schiffer whom he accuses of slander.
The background to the prosecution lies in attempts by German academics and some media voices to raise further question about the killing, and to ask, in particular, whether the criminal justice system bears some responsibility for the tragic death. As one of Germany's foremost experts on issues of media racism, Dr Sabine Schiffer had also questioned whether media portrayals of Muslims could have influenced the police officer who shot and seriously wounded Elwi Ali Oka. It is for publicly airing her views that Dr Schiffer faces prosecution.
When, on 11 November 2009, Wiens was found guilty of murder and given the harshest possible sentence under German law (life sentence with no eligibility for early release), many in Germany believed that justice had been done, and that the investigation was closed. Yet major questions on the attitudes of the authorities remained. Could it be that institutional negligence played a role in Marwa al-Sherbini's tragic death? Could it be that an independent inquiry would be the best way to establish the true facts about culpability? Was it acceptable that the police and the courts investigated themselves and cleared themselves of failing Marwa al-Sherbini and her family?
Questioning the system
Questions asked of the criminal justice system and the media include:
Was institutional neglect a contributory factor in the death of Marwa al-Sherbini? Dresden, the capital of Saxony, is symbolically an important city for German neo-nazis (the biggest neo-nazi rally in Europe is held here annually) and it is in the Länder of Saxony that the neo-nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (which Wiens sympathised with) has its highest support. (In June 2009 local and regional elections, it trebled its seats to a total of seventy-six). Yet despite this, and the fact that there has been a long history of racist violence in Dresden, no attempts were made to place the court case in an appropriate court room where Wiens would have been separated from the witness (he was standing less than two metres away from Marwa al-Sherbini, when he sprang up and attacked her). It also transpired that Wiens had carried the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, to court in his rucksack. He was not searched, despite the fact that he had made repeated threats against Marwa al-Sherbini at previous court hearings.
Why was no independent investigation launched into the shooting of al-Sherbini's husband, Elwi Ali Okaz? The police officer was initially suspended pending investigation but reinstated in December 2009. The public prosecutor's office in Dresden, announced that no charges would be brought, on the basis of an internal investigation. There is no independent police complaints authority in Germany, as in the UK.
Why did the media fail to report the murder as motivated by racism and Islamophobia? The murder of Marwa al-Sherbini barely drew any domestic media attention until it attracted widespread media coverage in Egypt and the Middle East. Indeed, it was initially reported as the result of a neighbourhood dispute, with headlines such as 'Murder over quarrel over swing'. Germany has high levels of racist and neo-nazi violence, in which scores of people have died. (The IRR European Race Audit documented eight such murders in 2007-2008.) Saxony is an area of known-neo nazi activity. How was it, then, that reporting of racist violence could be such a low priority for the media?
It was the attempt to kick-start debate on the third of these questions - media frameworks that might perpetuate racism - that drew the authority's attention to Dr Schiffer. Her previous work had focussed on media images of Muslims that promote 'scare scenarios'. In a number of media interviews and newspaper articles, she expressed dismay at the way the murder was covered in the press and called for an expert opinion to be obtained as to whether Elwi Ali Okaz was shot because of his appearance, pointing out 'it is an acceptable assumption that such images ... could bring about a spontaneous mistake as to possible perpetrators and victims in a situation where there is not time for calm deliberation and objective examination of the facts'. Crucially, Schiffer, never accused the police officer who carried out the shooting of having a fundamentally racist attitude or of acting intentionally. Nor did she name him. As she explained in a press release of 7 August, 'I merely wanted to note the consequences of media portrayals and admonish society as a whole.' Journalists at the Berliner Zeitung, also concerned at the failings of the criminal justice system, point out that it would have made more sense for the police officer involved to file charges against the judges whose failures placed him in an impossible situation where he had to make a snap judgement as to whom to shoot.
Because of the summary penalty order, Dr Schiffer is now forbidden to make any further public statements about the investigation of the murder. This is one of the things that irks the Action Group, which see the case against Schiffer as an example of the use of legal instruments to initimidate and censor those who voice an opinion in the media and where issues of racism are concerned, close down on freedom of speech. The group believes that if the prosecution against Schiffer is allowed to stand, then all those who engage in academic research on issues of racism could be prevented from voicing an opinion. 'It should not be illegal to put forward a thesis, to make suggestions in public, in order to improve our insights into how racism works.'
More criticisms of the criminal justice system
This is a valid point, as are the Action Group's criticisms of the court and criminal justice system for failing to establish a wider responsibility that went beyond the actions of the actual murderer. Both these points need to be put in context. Germany has a long history of neo-nazi violence, with victims ranging from the homeless, left-wingers, asylum seekers, migrants, black people and other non-white German citizens. Case after case from the Lübeck fire (1996)[1], to the hounding to death of the Algerian asylum seeker, Farid Guendoul (2000)[2], to the death in disturbing circumstances of the British Jewish student Jeremiah Duggan (2003)[3], have revealed a pattern of neglect - what we in the UK might call institutionalised racism - by both the police and the public prosecution service. This pattern ranges from the bringing of inappropriate charges, (manslaughter is often substituted for murder), flawed prosecutions (public prosecutors have been known to refuse to allow evidence of racist background to be heard), lenient sentencing as well as failure to develop a victim's perspective on extreme-right violence. (There has been criticism, for instance, of the lack of compensation for the victims of racism.) And it is not just academics who are suffering from the knee-jerk reaction of police officers to file suits for slander. Amnesty International has documented a pattern whereby those who allege police racism find themselves served with a counter-accusation of insulting and slandering police officers.
One can only hope that this misguided court case against Dr Sabine Schiffer will finally bring issues of institutionalised racism within the German criminal justice system to the fore.
[1] In 1996, ten asylum seekers, mostly African and including six children, died following arson at a refugee hostel in Lübeck. Despite the fact that neo-nazis were seen escaping the scene of the crime, no one was ever convicted, although twice an unsuccessful prosecution was brought against a Lebanese asylum seeker who lived at the hostel. [2] In February 1999, 28-year-old Farid Guendoul severed an artery and bled to death when he lept through a glass door in a bid to flee a gang of eleven neo-nazis who were chasing him through the streets of Guben, Spree-Neisse region. [3] Jeremiah Duggan, a 22-year-old British Jewish student was found dead on a dual carriageway in Wiesbaden shortly after attending an anti-war conference which, unknown to him, was organised by an extreme Right anti-Semitic organisation. The family do not accept the findings of the police investigation into his death.(under construction)
By Dr. Maryam Dagmar Schatz and Franziska Schneider
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| Sabine Schiffer and her lawyer Markus Künzel | all photos: IMV. |
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| Courtroom Packed Before Hearing |
Some courtroom visitors were taken aback by the presence of a cross on the wall, an invaluable contribution to understanding the meaning of "separation of church and state." Gradually, the room filled. Many interested persons had gathered in front of the courthouse - not only listeners, but also many active supporters who had come together through a Facebook group and an appeal for solidarity, as well as a broad spectrum of journalists, ranging from Nürnberger Nachrichten and the Turkish Zaman to the Jewish online media outlets Jüdische.at and Hagalil.
As is customary, the indictment was read into the record. Prosecutor Jutta Schmiedel had clearly put much effort into her preparations, as was clear from her oral submissions. She repeated the accusation levelled against Sabine Schiffer, i.e., that, in an interview with the German-language Iranian news station IRIB (which had interviewed other media personalities, such as Henryk Broder, as well), she had subjected Police Chief Inspector Grimm, who had fired a shot at the husband of Marwa el-Sherbini in the courtroom after she had just been murdered, to the opprobrium of his family and the public.
Nonetheless, even unbiased observers could not escape the conclusion that the prosecutor was making an ill-conceived attempt to impose a legal category on a statement that had never been made in the form to which she objected. Sabine Schiffer’s lawyer, Markus Künzel, was also quick to make this unmistakably clear. Initially, Judge Wolfgang Frank clearly had trouble finding his way through these contradictory arguments, though by the end of the hearing he had gradually regained control of the situation.
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| Prosecutor Schmiedel still beaming –
before the trial under the cross on the wall. |
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| Press conference at IMV – big media turnout |
What for defendant Schiffer was safe terrain seems to have been quicksand for Prosecutor Schmiedel. Quote: “The Balibar-Hall notion of racism (cf. Memmi) is considered in scholarship to be an umbrella term for discriminatory structures based on both mutable and immutable characteristics of persons. (...) The aforementioned phenomenon encompasses exclusionary mechanisms (...)“ - Because scholarship assumes that everyone is subject to certain structures of racist prejudice, Schiffer explained, it could also be assumed that a police officer would not necessarily be free of them. The prosecutor reduced Schiffer’s sophisticated, elegant analysis to a single word: “anti-immigrant”. At the end of her prepared statement, Sabine Schiffer explained what question immediately commended itself to her attention in the wake of the murder in Dresden: “Would a Muslim who made statements comparable to those made by Marwa El-Sherbini’s murderer have been allowed into the courtroom with a backpack without being searched?”
Only was it clear from her awkward handling of the notion of racism how unfamiliar Prosecutor Schmiedel was with the scholarly discourse that she had to evaluate; it became particularly shocking as she read her summation. Thus, she sought to link the accusation of racism allegedly leveled against the police officer by Schiffer to affronts against high state officials in the form of unsubstantiated comparisons with the Nazis, which had been examined by the courts in earlier cases. Apparently, she was trying to show that the reputations of state officials required special protection. She did not succeed. Rather, in our view, she succeeded in minimising Nazism by claiming that Sabine Schiffer’s thesis was particularly unacceptable in Germany in the light of the historical crimes of Nazism and the Nazi holocaust.
After Künzel gave his summation for the defence, the court’s decision was nervously awaited; the arguments raised likely surprised quite a few onlookers. The judge surely struggled to reach a fair, legally tenable interpretation, in which the word “surely” was central. He surely succeeded; unlike Prosecutor Schmiedel, who quoted only one definition from the dictionary, the judge preferred the second definition. “Surely (sicherlich)”, as uttered by Schiffer in the interview, could serve both to emphasise a statement of fact and to emphasise the subjective nature of an opinion, with the gloss "most likely". He obviously considered this likely.
This trial has brought together many people who did not know each other before. Networks were created, coalitions formed. The media interest was substantial, since the case was about saving a piece of freedom of expression, which is of concern to journalists, amongst others. The interview for which Sabine Schiffer was charged can be found here: http://german.irib.ir/media/interviews/schiffer.mp3 so that readers may form their own opinion. (PK)
Online Flyer No. 242, date: 25.03.2010
URL of the original article in German: http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=14954
