3rd day in court 05.04.2001:

Second try in mai?

The Berlin RZ case will likely start all over again in the middle of Mai. Bail hearings are scheduled for all accused. The court case was adjourned to Thursday, April 12.

The Presiding Judge Gisela Henning announced today that she plans to stay the current court case next Thursday. It is expected, that the court will decide on that day to amalgamate the current court case with the trial against Rudolf Sch., who faces similar charges. The councilors of Rudolf Sch. , Stefan Koenig and Hans Wolfgang Euler will need some time to look through the 115 binders of material. The main court case will then start all over again, today dates between the beginning and the middle of Mai were discussed.

Rudolf Sch. and the Berlin court case.

Rudolf Sch. has to face charges in Berlin after the Federal German Court of Appeal revised a decision by the Berlin High Court in the last week. The 2nd Senate of the Berlin High Court had argued that the right to be tried was void through the decision of the Frankfurt OPEC trial and had denied to open a court case against Sch ( as he faced similar charges there and was aqquitted). The Federal German Court of Appeal decided the other way.

The accusations against Sch. are more or less the same as the ones against the other 4 charged and are based - except the personal files - on the same material. The only difference is that Rudolf Sch. faces additional charges as ringleader, but is not charged with participation on the attack of the Berlin Victory Column 1991. The two lawyers representing Rudolf Sch. attended the trial today and Councilor Koenig said that he would be able to familiarise himself sufficiently with the material under shortening of the usual preparation time . But until now, none of the charges or the 115 binders of material for the Berlin case had been delivered to him.

Judge Henning stated explicitly that she supports the amalgamation of the two court cases and substantiated this specially with case-economical reasons. The decision about the amalgamation and the resulting stay of the current court case depend only on the question if there would be some surprises in the personal binders about Sch. Councilor Euler stated to his knowledge, there will be no surprise in the personal files about Rudolf Sch. - his identity, the stage of his court case, asf. No "surprise eggs" will be found.

Nevertheless, the court didn't want to decide today, but keep to the formal proceedings. Therefore the missing binders have to be presented to the 1st Senate, including the order of the 2nd Senate that the 1st Senate should amalgamate the current court case with the case against Rudolf Sch. This could take a while as the binders are courired between Karlsruhe and Berlin, between the Federal Court, the Federal Crowns Office and the two Senates of the High Court in Berlin. Neither the Federal Prosecutors nor the Court knew , where the binders currently are.

Termination of the remand detention?

Todays development means for the accused, who are in remand since 11 or 15 months, that they will serve at least 5 more weeks without any progress in their court case. Should there be a further delay in the delivery of the binders or in case the binders get lost, then there will be no decision about the amalgamation of the two court cases in the next week.

In this respect, the councilors pointed again to the disproportionately long time of serving time in remand. This will be stretched again although the late charges against Rudolf Sch. are a homemade problem of the Federal Prosecutors Office, as defence councilor Edith Lunnebach stated. After the decision about the amalgamation of the court cases - hopefully next week - , the court scheduled non public spoken bail hearings for all 4 accused. There will be - for the first time - the chance to present facts about the lives of the arrested, to defeat the reasons for the escape argument. The councilors pushed here for a serious test. The Federal Prosecutor today restated only a decision of the Federal High Court, which routinely issued a decision of the Federal High Court from March 16, that ordered the continuation of the detention for the next three months.

The mood among the public was generally good, although some had to wait up to one hour to be allowed to enter. At the beginning of the trial, Councilor Andrea Wuerdinger, said that app. 15 people had not been allowed to enter yet, although they had shown up in time.