A Statement on the trial

by Harald Glöde (17.05.2001)

With this personal statement, I wish to go beyond the statement my lawyers put forward in my name on the 29th March, where my concerns about possible prejudices on the part of the court and its Presiding Judge, respectively, were expressed. Meanwhile, during the last four days of a pseudo-trial, I had the opportunity to gather more impressions about the Presiding Judge, who is responsible for the way the trial is being carried out. The position of this court is expressed particularly by the court order from 12th April, on the continuation of our imprisonment. I would like to elaborate on this here with the help of some specific examples:

The 1st Criminal Division, on instruction by the BAW (Chief Federal Prosecution Office), is staging this trial as a "terrorist trial", in a style reminiscient of the 1970's and 1980's. Part of this orchestration is the extensive and intimidating control and searches that visitors of the trial have to endure before entering the court. They are expected to show up at least one or two hours before the official start of the trial in order to be let in on time. Visitors' passports are copied with the justification of "enabling a quick identification of troublemakers". Further, there are the intensive and partly degrading body checks, including having to take off the shoes and the rummaging through the hair of trial visitors. Furthermore, the Presiding Judge ordered the confiscation of all objects taken along to the trial for the trial period. Even members of a group of international trial observers were therefore not allowed to take their writing equipment into court.

The orchestration of a "terrorist trial" includes long waiting periods for the trial visitors on the stairs outside the court room, under unacceptable conditions, until the final admission. I do not know exactly why the Presiding Judge has taken this step with her security order of 12th March 2001. In my opinion however, it is in line with the incomprehensible, abnormal way of thinking on the part of the BAW with regard to security matters. This thinking has already been portrayed during my transports, which so far have always consisted of a convoy of three cars and an escort of seven to eight officials from the BKA (Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation) or the GSG 9 (German special police units). In my opinion, the true reason for this orchestration is the wish to create an atmosphere of threat and danger, with the aim to disguise the dubious nature of the proceedings in relation to the legal aspects involved and as such, to gain a flimsy air of legitimisation of their decision to continue the imprisonment. The above conditions of the trial reflect the first indications for the sentence planned.

Up to now, the court has given only fragmentary information to the defence on the planned course of the trial. An attempt to get a quick hearing of evidence cannot be noted in any case. Similarly, an independent system and planning to cope with the comprehensive files cannot be detected either. Considering the size and the order of the files, it becomes clear that every attempt to plan such a trial involves a lot of work. It has to be noted therefore, that without some system and planning, the judicial duty of viewing all the evidence is not taken seriously by the court. And, as it has been seen, because the sequence of witnesses hearings is oriented towards the holiday stand-in schedule of the BKA, and the court accepts this unquestioningly, there simply have to be serious doubts as to the intentions of the court in fulfilling their duties with regard to ensuring swift proceedings and the full hearing of evidence. The impression could arise that the BKA, by influencing the sequence of appearance of witnesses, is trying to influence the hearing of evidence in court.

I will later elaborate on the fact that the investigation files given to us (my lawyers and myself) are incomplete. So far, the court has not commented on this matter. Requests by my lawyers to receive the missing parts of the files are dealt with very slowly and without the slightest effort by the court. This means that today, one and a half years after the charges were brought, we are facing the same situation which we had at the beginning of this trial, that we still do not have complete investigation files. Moreover, we have not even received a particular file that we requested via the court in November 2000 and which was requested by the Presiding Judge at the Prosecutor's office in February 2001. And now, at the renewed opening of the trial, a telephone call with the Prosecutor's Office has resulted in a change of mind by the Presiding Judge and she has declared that consultation of the requested file is not necessary any more.

How little the legally stipulated duty to clear up evidence means to this judge has already become obvious by a motion on the bias of the court, recently put forward by the defence.

During the days of this pseudo-trial so far, I could not notice any effort on behalf of the Court of Appeal to make rapid progress on this trial. On the contrary, it was delayed and protracted by the Presiding Judge, for example by the cancellation of three initially scheduled days of trial. When therefore, in its decision from the 12th April 2001, the 1st Senate asserts "that the Senate rapidly pursued the trial after the charges were brought", it holds true for this court in so far as the Senate has the necessary authority of definition. However, everybody who has been present during these four days of trial will know that this assertion has nothing to do with reality.

The decision to continue custody very clearly reveals the preoccupation of this court. The four accused have to remain in custody because they can expect a severe sentence. It is argued that in all four cases there is a danger of absconding. However, the four accused have lived in very different social circumstances. Nevertheless, the Court of Appeal finds a justification for any of these circumstances to argue for a danger of absconding. A serious verification of the individual cases has definitely not taken place. In the end, the point was only to continue imprisonment for the extortion of evidence, for which the law is responsible. To pursue this goal, the court will not even halt at the use of false assertions.

In order to justify the discrepancy between the severe sentences that we four accused can expect, contrary to the mild sentence for Tarek Mousli, the 1st Senate conceded "that Tarek Mousli laid claim to the Crown Witness Regulation, which was still valid at that time". However, the 2nd Senate of the Court of Appeal explicitly pronounced its sentence against Tarek Mousli "regardless of the special arrangement for the state's witnesses". The preoccupation of the court becomes even more obvious with its decision of 12th April 2001: the decision argues for severe sentencing of the accused, on grounds of the physical injuries of the victims Hollenberg and Korbmacher, even though these offences already fall under statute-barred limitations.

Now in my case, not even Tarek Mousli states that I took part in the attack on Hollenberg. Therefore, this charge does not appear in the indictment. And even the BAW state in their bill of indictment that I cannot be sentenced for the attack on Korbmacher, as a result of a statute of limitation according to criminal law. However, this seems to be of no interest to the court. I can only think of two possible explanations for this flagrant contradiction: either the judges did not read the files and the indictment conscientiously, or they have such a strong tendency towards a severe sentence, that conscious of their authority of definition, they ignore such restricting and disturbing passages. And a final remark on this decision: the Court of Appeal claims, amongst other things, that their decision is also for my sake. I hereby demand from the Court of Appeal, never again to abuse my interests in this manner. This dimension of cynicism and hypocrisy is unbearable to me.

To fully understand this position and the way the 1st Senate has behaved so far, one has to remember the six-year-long history of the investigations for this trial up to the present day. I made the attempt to re-enact the course of this investigation with the help of the investigation files given to us. During this examination, I came across a whole sequence of gaps, of inconsistencies and of traces of manipulation that raise a lot of questions for me. Indeed, after a reasonable and unbiased study of these files, the judges of this Senate should have noticed these peculiarities, too. However, until now I could not observe any respective queries on the part of the court to the prosecuting authorities with regard to these inconsistencies. From these findings, I can only conclude that the 1st Senate pursues our sentence without an objective and critical hearing of the evidence.

Below, I would like to explain how the investigation of the BKA and the BAW appears to me according to the files. They give the impression that the different steps of the investigation were developed with the use of an internal BKA guide entitled "How to Create a State's Witness".

I will start in March 1998 and then proceed chronologically.

In March 1998, Tarek Mousli and his then partner were found by the BKA to be the tenants of the cellar from which, almost to the day three years ago, explosives were claimed to have been stolen, explosives which were seized by the Berlin police on the 7th April 1995. Although the BKA was informed about this seizure the very same day, in the investigation files we were given access to there is no indication as to any following investigating activities on the part of the BKA. According to the files, a cooperation between the BKA and the BAW only began at the end of November 1997; furthermore, the description of this cooperation in the files appears slightly constructed. This is so, because without apparent reason, the cooperation suddenly leads to the "re-discovery" of the explosives from March 1995, which until then seems to have been forgotten by the investigating authorities. Further, the explosives are then directly connected to the investigations into the RZ. The investigation documented from then on leads to the aforementioned cellar and his tenant Tarek Mousli. I do not wish to go into this period from March 1995 to March 1998, since it is also omitted from the files. On 6th March 1998, Tarek Mousli appears for the first time in the files as the tenant of this cellar and on the 11th March 1998, the BAW initiates "preliminary proceedings against an unknown person to be suspect of a crime after § 129a", with the keyword "RZ depot". Mr. Schulzke, the former chief police BKA officer, is instructed with leading the investigation. Assuming that the different steps of the investigation are documented in the files, it has to be noted again that in the following period, there were no investigations about Tarek Mousli, at least if one does not accept a repeated search in the telephone directory for Tarek Mousli's current telephone number and address as an intensive investigation.

Since the end of October 1998, Tarek Mousli's phone was tapped with judicial approval. From that moment onwards, the investigation files are filled with reports on specially selected telephone calls and many notes on technical problems related to phone tapping. Other investigation activities do not take place during this time, at least if one is willing to believe the files. The Court of Appeal has accepted these rather fragmentary investigation files without questioning, and has furthermore taken them as a basis for the opening of the main trial. Everybody who has read more than one crime story is justified in asking him/herself what investigations were actually carried out in the period from March 1998 to April 1999, and why nothing can be found about them in the files?

I assume that during this year, intensive investigations on the person of Tarek Mousli did indeed take place. I do not want to speculate about the way and on which scale these investigations were carried out. However, the possibilities and methods which the BKA has at its disposal are well known. In any case, it can be assumed that enough background information on Tarek Mousli was gathered in order to construct an appropriate picture of his personality, a 'psychogram'. I suppose that on this basis and in agreement with the BAW, further actions and the goals of the investigations were discussed and agreed upon. The course adopted was presumably built on the following premises:

• Given the long duration of the investigations, there firstly had to be a result to these investigations and secondly, they had to be as spectacular as possible. After all, in Spring 1999, already four years had passed since the confiscation of the explosives. The sole arrest of Tarek Mousli would not have been sufficient for such a spectacular result of the investigation. Whatever happened, more people had to be arrested.
• With the understanding and the assessments gained from Tarek Mousli by the BKA and the BAW, the latter could assume that Tarek Mousli could be made to give further evidence as well as to incriminate other people, as long as the police action was adequately calculated and took place in stages. Following this strategy, Tarek Mousli's flat, the workplace and some other places were searched on 14th April 1999, with the charge of supporting a terrorist group. At his provisional arrest, Tarek Mousli showed himself cooperative, referring to his good contacts to various police officials.Earlier, he already had a discussion with BKA officers about a possible discovery of weapons and explosives, which he later declared to have been a joke. The same day, Tarek Mousli was released on order of the BAW. This release is remarkable, all the more so if one looks closely at the history of §129a proceedings, where it is hard to find comparative behaviour on the part of the BAW (i.e. the quick release of anyone accused under § 129a). Further, this is the first of several examples in these proceedings where the BAW actually play the role of the lawyer for the accused Tarek Mousli and as such, make a defence superfluous: at Tarek Mousli's trial, the latter's lawyer had nothing more to do than to support the speech of the BAW.

During the conversations that took place the following day, Tarek Mousli was offered the role of the state's witness for the first time, and he states "that he would declare his standpoint on the accusations of the BKA in the presence of his lawyer". In principle, Tarek Mousli appears cooperative without, however, commenting on the specific charges at the time.

One month later, on the 9th May 1999, Tarek Mousli is arrested again. In addition to the 'support of a terrorist group', the BKA is now of the opinion to be able to charge him with 'possession of explosives'. This is based on the evidence given by the former partner of Tarek Mousli.

Tarek Mousli now mentions for the first time that the objects found and confiscated at his home might belong to the deceased Michael Wittmann. Some tine later, a conversation between Tarek Mousli and Schulzke takes place, where the evaluation of such evidence in relation to criminal law is discussed. As is the case in many other conversations between these two, nothing is taken down in the minutes, but is mentioned in passing and summarised in a report by Schulzke.

To increase the pressure put on Tarek Mousli, he is first imprisoned in the JVA Moabit. At the same time however, the stiffening of prison conditions usual for §129a proceedings are overruled by the BAW. The security officials at the JVA Moabit take note of this by apparently being astonished and the investigating magistrate seems to have expected something else as well.

As a mark of the co-operation obviously aimed for, the BAW sends Tarek Mousli the "available investigation files" on the day of his arrest. They generously wait before questioning him on the charges, until he has been able to familiarise himself with the results of the investigations. This gives Tarek Mousli not only the opportunity to adjust his evidence to these results, but also to improve his credibility. He distorts the real connection in his later interrogations and emphasises quite often that his evidence is corroborated by the results of the investigations, while in reality he thinks about his evidence with the help of these results. Again, the way the BAW is handling the case, e.g. the early surrender of the investigation files, which is legally not intended, will not be found in any other §129a proceedings.

During Tarek Mousli's custody, the offer to be a state's witness is yet again proposed by Schulzke. This time however, with the request "not to present a corpse as the former owner of the explosives that were found in his cellar. This means that he should not name a person who had died in the meantime." Again, this conversation is not taken down in the minutes, but is only found in the files as a summarised report by Schulzke. As such, it is not possible to understand whether this alleged warning was in reality not meant as a hint. In this report, a reference to the duty to tell the truth, especially as a state's witness, is looked for in vain. The course of this conversation between these two very clearly raises the impression that Tarek Mousli indeed understood this request as a hint. That is, he tries spontaneously to sell Michael Wittmann, who died at the beginning of the year 1997, as the real owner of the explosives, combined with the statement that he had been a member of the RZ under the alias of 'Roger'. However, Tarek Mousli very quickly realises that a person who was bound to a wheelchair before his death and, since an accident in 1990 dependent on 24 hour medical care, would not be accepted as a plausible alleged member of the RZ. Apart from this, Michael Wittmann's 'cover name' "Roger" was indeed used as Michael Wittmann's nickname in the left-wing scene, rendering it an unlikely 'cover'. This first spontaneous attempt to present a corpse was very quickly turned into a test by Tarek Mousli, for him to gain an impression on how the BKA would react. In the future, whenever he gets into difficulties to explain something during interrogation by the BAW, he falls back on this first positive experience and presents 'Roger' as the real culprit. With this device, he gains the necessary time to think things over, to take back first statements in later interrogations and to present other statement, which are more carefully considered.

Tarek Mousli shows himself to be co-operative and after studying the investigation files starts giving testimony on the special areas addressed by the BAW. On 25th June 1999, only one month after his arrest and about one week after it turned out that his evidence with regard to the place where he claims to have personally stored the explosives was wrong, the BAW again requests a verbal review of remand in custody. The review of remand in custody takes place on the 7th July 1999, with the result that the BAW requests a release from custody. Tarek Mousli is released from custody despite having stated at the time that he kept the explosives for an old friend who remains unnamed, and despite the fact that the place where he claims to have stored the explosives is not found by the police after intensive searches. Further, during the surprising presentation of the letter "Dear Luka", he once again presents Michael Wittmann as the real owner of this letter. Again, a comparison with the manner of the BAW and other § 129a proceedings portrays in what an extraordinary manner this whole case is being handled. Although a month later, on 2nd August 1999, the BAW extends the proceedings against Tarek Mousli to include the charge of riot leadership, a corresponding new extended arrest warrant is requested by the BAW only two months later, on 9th November 1999. The arrest warrant is issued on the 23rd November 1999.

The investigations the BKA carried out within these three and a half months, since Tarek Mousli is released again, can be inferred from the investigation files only in a very limited way. Here again, the files are demonstrably fragmentary. However, during the "new sorting" of the files, an embarrassing mishap seems to have crept in. Some records are in the files, which prove that the BKA tapped the telephone of Tarek Mousli without seeking a judicial order.

At his new arrest on 23rd November 1999, the situation has worsened considerably for Tarek Mousli. The sentence he is threatened with has been increased drastically by the charge of riot leadership. But furthermore, he has been given notice at work, as a trainer on a fee basis at the Berlin- and the Federal German Karate Association. The loss of his job was a result of the investigations that took place very publicly, almost demonstratively, in particular at the Berlin Karate Association. The financial problems which have characterised Mousli's life for a long time, and which were known by the police, were now considerably aggravated. In precise knowledge of this situation, the BKA once again offered Tarek Mousli to take advantage of the special arrangements for state witnesses under the Crown Witness Regulation, with a subsequent financial provision in the framework of the witnesses' shelter program. It was made very clear to Tarek Mousli, that he could only avoid a long confinement as a result of the long period of investigation as well as a prison sentence of several years, if he would provide the prosecuting office with "scoops", that means further culprits. In the case of his cooperating, he was told he could expect a suspended sentence of two years, a sentence which was in fact imposed on him at the end of his trial.

Now the prosecuting authorities had reached their goal. Tarek Mousli had been manoeuvred into a completely hopeless situation. He had to expect a very severe sentence and even if, contrary to all expectations, the sentence was light, his main source of income would be destroyed. In this hopeless situation, the BAW offered him a "golden solution", so to speak, a suspended sentence and subsequent financial support within the framework of the witness protection program. At that time, he had already experienced the advantages of cooperating with the BAW by the privileges he was granted during his time in custody, which could be observed later (for example his girl-friend being able to pay him weekly visits), which however, are not indicated in the files. Finally, after a telephone conversation with his girl friend, Tarek Mousli immediately agrees to the offer by the BAW and, during the preliminary giving of evidence, once again presents a dead person. This time it is Gerd Albartus, who is said to have recruited him to the RZ and with whom together he claims to have been in the RZ. From then on, Tarek Mousli continues to refer to Gerd Albartus if in need of an explanation for his alleged 'insider knowledge' or to construct stories to make himself important and emphasise his value as a crown witness for the BKA. If in doubt, his information comes from Gerd Albartus. From now on, Tarek Mousli also says, guided by his fatherly friend Schulzke, what the latter wishes to hear. The conversations between these two are by now a regular occurrence, but are only partly taken down in the minutes as interrogations. Part of this more than dubious practice has already been mentioned by the lawyer Mr. Kaleck in his request for a stay of proceedings and also in the statement put forward by my lawyers on the 29th March. I do not wish to repeat these arguments here, in particular as the various contradictions and the allegations of the state's witness, which are written in the files, will be extensively referred to in the course of the present trial, especially during the interrogation of the crown witness.

Concerning the allegations against Tarek Mousli, the latter proves to be so eager and receptive during the teamwork with the prosecuting authorities and the cooperation with Schulzke that the BKA lets the investigations against him phase out and in part drops them completely. For example, the requests on a forensic investigation on the objects confiscated during the first search of Tarek Mousli's flat in April 1999, have until now not taken place. Other requests were simply withdrawn. The trial against Tarek Mousli was finally carried out in December 2000, although the investigations were not completely finished.

However, since none of the persons directly concerned had a real interest in a serious trial against Tarek Mousli and the only point was to formally confirm the result arranged in advance, this question could be dropped without many problems. The defending lawyers of the people accused by Tarek Mousli were not officially admitted to his trial. I suppose they would only have disturbed the orchestration. It shall only be mentioned in passing, that during the trial, the charge against Tarek Mousli of riot leadership was again reduced to simple membership. To me, the assumption suggests itself that the investigation against Tarek Mousli was not taken any further simply so as to avoid more contradictions in the evidence of the state's witness on file. After all, there are too many of them already. If one considers the files, the state's witness gains credibility and a power of persuasion as a result of the teamwork of Tarek Mousli and Schulzke, a process which can almost be called fascinating. If you take a closer look however, it quickly becomes evident that this is only successful because Schulzke deliberately works towards the possibility for Tarek Mousli to build up his image of a credible witness. During the conversations and interrogations, Schulzke consistently smooths out contradictions and even ignores them. Even though Schulzke knows, or should know better from his own earlier investigations, that Tarek Mousli has the tendency not to state things as they are and to tell lies, Schulzke consistently ignores this fact and not a word is mentioned in the files. Presumably, Schulzke portrays Tarek Mousli as an absolutely trustworthy crown witness also towards the officials from the BKA, who consequently trust Tarek Mousli almost blindly.

This development can be read from the innumerable questions and answers. If Mousli states that this or that circumstance is not relevant to the proceedings, then the corresponding subject is crossed from the list by the interrogating authorities. This is also expressed in the close relationship that is observed between Tarek Mousli and BKA officers during the second search of the Mehringhof building, where the men from the BKA were directed by Mousli by a direct, live video line. At the forensic investigations, which followed this search, the question was no longer to confirm the evidence of the witness, that is, whether explosives really had been deposited there. Rather, the directions given to the investigation were to find out "which explosives could be discovered in these samples", assuming the witness to be undeniably correct in his assertions. The fact that once more no traces of explosives were found in these mopped-up samples had no negative effect on the growing relationship of trust and cooperation between the BKA and Tarek Mousli. On the contrary, the longer the conversations last, Tarek Mousli is built up more and more as an alleged expert for various left-wing radical connections and finally, he is even instructed and used as a consultant in this matter. The ability to realise very quickly what his respective counterparts wish to hear and to immediately deliver the corresponding tale is certainly one of the qualities of Mousli's acting talent. One could almost compare the state's witness to a music-box: the desired title sounds after the touch of a button, as for Tarek Mousli a keyword is enough to strike the desired melody.

In this constellation, the personal interest of Schulzke, the leader of the investigations, is not to be neglected. Since the 1980's, he had been leading investigations against the Rote Zora and the Revolutionary Cells and it seems, just in time for his retirement, wanted to organise a real big success. To achieve this, he has gone to a lot of trouble.

During the course of the conversations and interrogations respectively, a relationship was established between the BKA, the BAW and the state's witness that can be aptly characterised as a companionship in distress. Because the BKA and the BAW decided very early on to build up Tarek Mousli as a crown witness, and adjusted their investigation strategy accordingly, they could not dissociate themselves from this path after a certain point without fundamentally jeopardizing the work accomplished so far. From this logic, the pressure rose for the BKA and the BAW to ignore the contradictions in the evidence given by Mousli, to ignore them and to spare him from giving a testimony that was too obviously false, by omitting corresponding confrontations. A result of this companionship in distress is the at least partially overlapping interests of the state's witness and the prosecuting authorities. Further steps of investigation are justified more and more by the interest to maintain this companionship in distress, rather than following the principles of a democratic and constitutional order, such as clearing up facts or finding the truth.

As the lawyer Mr. Kaleck has already explained very comprehensively in his request of 29th March for a discontinuation of proceedings: in the face of this state's witness having been built up and trained over the past one and a half years, no fair trial in the sense of the principle of a constitutional state is possible any more. This fact does not change, even if the BAW is never tired of stressing that the proceedings take place strictly in the framework of the law. How easily shaped and how flexible the legal framework is for the BAW can be demonstrated once more with the example of these very proceedings. One of these examples is the fact that Mousli is given access to the investigation files at the very day of his arrest, the others accused by Mousli however, have to wait for almost one year, only then to be fobbed off with incomplete files. And even if the room for manoeuvre allowed for by the law was not adequate to achieve the self-imposed goals of the BAW, the old maxim of the former heads of the BKA or BAW can be used to describe this trial, that is, "people like us always find a way".

The last time this maxim was followed was in the trial against Monika Haas, where the Chief Public Prosecutor Homann proved what kind of power and what possibilities of abuse the BAW have at their disposal. That the BAW does not have to fear serious control and review of their activities by the allegedly independent courts is substantiated by the respective decisions of the responsible investigating magistrate or the 3rd Criminal Division of the BGH (Federal Supreme Court) respectively. They have always found an investigating magistrate who subscribed to and followed the applications neededfor the actionsin the current investigations and who agreed to the special measures taken as far as Tarek Mousli was concerned. The 3rd Criminal Division of the BGH is not thinking of a serious control of the prosecuting authorities' conduct, as he notified them, once again in the verbal pronouncement of the judgement in the Monika Haas trial. There, the Presiding Judge stated that "fighting international terrorism demands the exploitation of all pieces of evidence available". The Supreme Court could not let the prosecuting authorities know more clearly that it will grant the latter not only the use of evidence gathered in an illegal manner but also the presentation of evidence which is banned from use by legal prohibition.

So far, I have worked exclusively on the manipulations by the BKA in the framework of the current proceedings. Their actions however, would not have been possible without the approval and support of the competent prosecuting authorities of the BAW. In the end, it is they who have the legal responsibility for the proceedings and normally it is they who should direct the investigations. An active control on the part of the BAW cannot be detected in the files we have been given access to. Indeed, as already outlined above, at the latest after the charges were brought and Mousli had been decided on as a crown witness, the BAW was forced the follow the chosen path and therefore forced to follow the course of manipulation and control of the proceedings.

During the history of the § 129a trials, the BAW has been able to collect a considerable degree of experience and has developed experienced cooperation with the few courts of competent jurisdiction. I do not want to waste time on the numerous examples of this, but will focus on some measures of manipulation which I can see in the current proceedings.

- Part of this is first of all the completely unjustified delay in the inspection of records for the persons accused. The only possible reason for this is to give the BKA and the state's witness time to learn the desired evidence and, if possible, to move contradictions out of the way. Part of this logic is also that the defending lawyers never get the possibility to be present at the conversations and interrogations, which is usually absolutely legally stipulated at least for judicial interrogations.

- The re-enacting of the course of the investigations is made almost impossible by the BAW, by the "new sorting" of the files we were given access to. As a consequence, none of the other persons involved in the trial are able to get the general idea of the proceedings, with the exception of the BAW. According to the information given by public prosecutor Homann "the structuring of the investigation file by subjects, persons and connections corresponds to the well-tried practice of the BAW carried out at numerous large-scale proceedings". The possibility that during this "new sorting", the disappearance of single parts of the files is much easier and can be noticed only by a very intensive study of the files is certainly more of an intended goal than an accidental side effect. It is therefore also hardly a matter of chance that the various requests, i.e. to be given access to the obviously missing parts of the files, have been worked on by the BAW only very hesitantly, or not at all.

Beyond this, in relation to this trial it must be stated once again that removing parts of the files to manipulate them is part of the common repertoire of the BAW. For example, two pages of the file Slawinski, the person who is considered to have stolen the explosives from the cellar of Tarek Mousli in March 1995 were later removed, despite the fact that that file was actually closed long ago.

In my opinion, the fact that the BAW (in spite of the corresponding requests by the defence) does not make the slighest effort to provide these removed pages, but only makes excuses, proves to be circumstantial evidence that these pages have been removed intentionallyand with the toleration of the BAW. The companionship in distress between the BAW and the state's witness mentioned above, as well as the pressure on the BAW to succeed, a pressure which is increasing as the period of the proceedings becomes longer and longer, has led to the current situation, where investigation results of the BKA have to be re-interpreted or even negated in order to prevent them from contradicting the crown witness's statements, thereby questioning his credibility.

I want to pick only one of the various examples by which this practice can be proven: from the bill of indictment.

According to the investigations of the BKA, a female offender fired the gun in the attack on Hollenberg. The repeated evidence given by Hollenberg himself supports this finding. But since Tarek Mousli committed himself very clearly and in an early stage to a male offender, who fired in this attack, the whole evidence given by Hollenberg had to be interpreted in a new way to correspond to the crown witness's evidence. In the bill of indictment, the BAW now calls the perceptions and the evidence of Hollenberg a 'reconstruction' of the crime, which is based on inference. Correspondingly, this would be less conclusive than the statement given by Tarek Mousli about the male offender, whom the state's witness claims to know only by hearsay.

Behind this control and manipulation of the proceedings, which can be shown by a whole line of other examples, the intentions of the BAW to get a conviction in any case appears very clear. The most recent decisions, which have led to a motion by the defence lawyers to discard the proceedings on grounds of bias of court, put in writing today, show once more how much the 1st Criminal Division is guided in its decisions by the same determination, to get a conviction.

On grounds of the above exposition, I will go beyond the statement made in the request by lawyer Kaleck mentioned above: that a fair trial is not possible any longer. I would claim that a fair trial is not even striven for, neither by the court, nor by the public prosecution.