04.10.2001: 25^th court day

"Declaration of war" by the Federal Prosecuting Office (BAW)

The decision on the request by the defence for a stay of proceedings will probably be taken tomorrow. Meanwhile the BAW declared "war" against the defence, because they had aimed at the "total destruction of the civil existence ("bürgerliche Existenz") of the Crown Witness". However, Federal Prosecutor Bruns had to immediately revoke the only relevant accusation against the two defending lawyers in his declaration. The trial day ended before lunch time already, with a brief interrogation of a witness to the Hollenberg case, the then investigating officer of the Regional Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA).

Contrary to expectations, the presiding judge did not make a decision on the defence's request for a stay of proceedings today. The reason for this was an addition to the request made by defending lawyers Würdinger and Studzinsky, read out by defending lawyer König in representation of defending lawyer Euler (Frankfurt/M.), who was absent today.

Euler declared in his request that he would not have the time to examine the evidence, which only appeared recently, parallel to the present proceedings. A refusal of the request for a stay of proceedings (altogether over 1,400 recordings have to be examined) would therefore parallel an obstruction of the work of the defence. In this context, Euler also pointed to the fact that himself and his colleague König had initially agreed to a shortened familiarisation period with the proceedings only because they had assumed the evidence was complete. König followed the request, as did defending lawyer Eisenberg. After a one hour break, the presiding judge Hennig therefore delayed the decision on the stay of proceedings until the next trial day.

In a presented declaration, public prosecutor Bruns talked of "incidents" of the past week and declared "war" to the defence. He was referring to the lawyers Studzinsky and Würdinger presenting material which proved the relevance of telephone interception tapes in the truth finding process of this trial and which also pointed to Mousli's personal circumstances in this respect. Bruns however interpreted the evidence as "dirty tales from the life of a fairy tale prince" which lacked conclusiveness. He further claimed that the lawyers were not capable of even examining audit tapes correctly. An accusation which obviously lacked any basis because it had been, as the presiding judge Hennig immediately informed, her and associate judge Hanschke who had claimed that a conversation between Tarek Mousli and his then girlfriend Janette O. was missing from the tapes. The BAW, so Bruns, still sees "no basis for a common conduct of the case any more".