Withdrawing police harass Gorleben activists

http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/98283.shtml 10.11.2004 12:08 Themen: Atom
Police withdrawing from their Gorleben Castor assignment have chased people through a forest, beaten them with batons and made arbitrary arrests. They allege police water cannons were shot at from the forest and pelted with branches.
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x 10.11.2004 - 12:15
Police from a Wuppertal unit are described by the witness writing the German post as having obvious sadistic glee at their arbitrary exercise of power. Other witnesses are asked to report to the investigating committee of the BI Lüchow-Dannenberg.

The incidents happened on the rural road between the villages of Gross-Gusborn and Grippel, which has only just been reopened to normal traffic after the Castor convoy passed on it yesterday.

At minute intervals police convoys from all federal states are running in both directions, constituting the main traffic.

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x 10.11.2004 - 12:24
Demonstrators are also still on the road or the cycle and walking path beside it. Some are going through the forest.

Two kilometres from Grippel a police squad from Wuppertal stops in the middle of the road.

The officers leap out of their vehicles and run into the forest. They also drive some vehicle into it. They yell, “Stop! Stand still!” and arrest everyone they reach, regardless of whether they’re in the forest, beside the road, or walking on it.

Those arrested are told that some minutes previously a Hamburg convoy was pelted with branches and shot at from the forest.

Other people nearby observing the activities, including drivers who happen on the scene, are told to stay 50 metres away or risk arrest for hindering police work.

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+ 10.11.2004 - 12:42
There were many other witnesses who in view of the incredible arbitrariness fled for understandable reasons.

Many cars that passed may have taken photos.

All are asked to report to the investigating committee: tel: 05841/ 979 430, 19.30- 21.00h
Mondays, or  ea-gorleben@nadir.org.

Best is to write an account from memory and to mail it (not fax or email) to Ermittlungsauschuß, c/o Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg,
Drawehner Straße 3, 29439 Lüchow.

Bad

feedom 10.11.2004 - 12:54
This is very sad. Even if some of the cars where attacked there was no direct link to the people walking along the road. If this is the strategy of the German government to pressure the protesters, I regard this is a very poor demonstration of government power. We have to be concerned that further injury to people and severe threatening will occure if the courts are not bouding the police to their rights. If young girls driving a tractor on a field are forced to leave their tractor, standing on their parents land with a pulled police gun, this is a wrong and dangerous sign to our peaceful protests. I am afraid the German police forces are not under control anymore. If restriction are not set, a severe accident might change more than we all would like to happen. Nuclear power poses a risk which is high enough. We do not need the risk to be killed by police!

"Better policing, more sensitive courts"

Diet Simon 14.11.2004 - 13:22
The Investigating Committee and Emergency Attorney Service of the Gorleben resistance
( http://www.castor.de/diskus/gruppen/ea/pm11092004.html) report positive tendencies in the respecting of civic rights +++ Police proved that if this is wanted, legal principles can be upheld even in large-scale deployments against non-violent demonstrators +++ In many places non-violent sitdown blockades with our without tractors were dispersed by appropriate carrying and driving away instead of beating, dogs and horses or wilful damaging +++ In some places the police were unnecessarily violent (painful grips, poking in eyes, beatings, twisting of arms and legs). We find especially deplorable the inappropriate use of gas, batons against children and the threatening of a 16-year-old girl with a drawn pistol +++ The hundreds of court actions since 2001 to test police detentions in recent years have proved successful, the courts’ sensitivity to the personal freedom of non-violent protesters having increased +++ After years of our work in this area the number of police detentions has dropped for the first time +++ We see some charges raised by police now as an infamous attempt to feed computers with as much personal data on active citizens as possible +++ We find very worrying the growing use of police spies +++ There were again many hindrances of press freedom, journalists being restrained despite press Ids in many places, held up at police barriers or sent on wild goose chases +++ In a free democracy contact between citizens and media is free under the constitution, Art. 5 GG. +++ We see a positive trend in the right of assembly, with a more critical attitude to police powers.

Contact: Ermittlungsausschuß Gorleben
c/o Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz
Tel. 05841 – 97 94 30
Fax: 05841 – 97 94 40
 ea-gorleben@nadir.org

for the attorney emergency service of the Republikanischen Rechtsanwältinnen- und Rechtsanwältevereins (RAV):
Attorney Ulrike Donat
Tel: 040 – 39 10 61 80
Fax: 040 – 39 10 61 83

Attorney Thomas Hauswaldt
Tel. 040 – 37 37 47 0
Fax: 040 – 37 37 47 99

Real-life satire in Castor court

Verschiedene 15.11.2004 - 18:10
The trial resumes in Cologne on Monday (22 November) of three activists charged with stopping a nuclear waste train in May 2003 for half an hour. Satire couldn’t be better!

The train was taking spent fuel rods from north German power stations to the plutonium factory at La Hague, northern France, for processing.
The accused are alleged to have taken part in an action in Datteln in the Ruhr district in which the train was stopped by opening a road barrier.

See  http://de.indymedia.org/2003/05/51387.shtml for a report and  http://de.indymedia.org/2003/05/51478.shtml for pictures.

After this action the helicopter flying with the train noticed a car driving some distance from the rails. The car was pursued until the autobahn where autobahn police stopped it.
After their data were taken down, the occupants of the car were allowed to drive on. A few months later all received notices from the border police office in Cologne that they were being fined 500 euros (!) each.
In swollen offiacalese the notices say, “According to the witnesses listed below you used your body as a means of blockading in that you let yourself down on the rails to stop a train.”
All concerned have filed challenges to the fine notices, which has led to several trials at the responsible Amtsgericht Köln.

The first trial against a woman in January this year ( http://de.indymedia.org//2004/01/72671.shtml) revealed that the witnesses listed in the fine notice don’t exist.

None of the ten police or border police personnel called to testify had seen the woman charged or any other person on or near the rails.
No problem, though, for presiding judge Klimmer. His razor-sharp reasoning was: “It makes no sense to travel at night from your place of residence, Hanover, or from any other place, and then to stand idly by and expose only the other nuclear opponents to the danger of being seized by police.”

200-euro fines. Which robbed those concerned of the chance to appeal to a higher level, because that can usually take place only from 250 euros upwards. The judge justified his lowering of the fine by the fact that the accused has no income of her own.
But on top of the fine, the woman has to pay court costs, of which the biggest item is the mere 400 euros witness compensation – double the original fine.

In March trials took place of two more accused in front of various female judges. The same witnesses were allowed to travel in again – and again, slightly unnerved to desperate, they could only testify that they saw no one on the rails.
Thereupon the trials were remanded indefinitely.
Two other accused could not appear on their trial dates because they were ill. In both cases judge Klimmer out of chicanery at first refused to recognise the sickness certificates submitted on time, which made the 500-euro fines binding.
Only after a tenacious paper trail the accused were able to gain continuation of their proceedings.
The trial on Monday promises to be another weird encounter with the German legal system.
Judge Klimmer is presiding again and he’s seen to it that all the parameters are right: the well known witnesses are allowed to travel to Cologne for the third time to testify yet again that they have nothing to testify.
Could the choice of witnesses be a procedural trick not to lower the fine while at the same time barring the way to an appeal?
And so they all meet again...

So that the law does not assume too intimate a character, we warmly invite you to the trial.
Turn up, support the accused by your presence and enjoy the real-life satire of German courts! A high entertainment value is assured.
Place: Amtsgericht Köln, Luxemburger Str. 101, 50939 Köln, Room 33 (ground floor)
Monday, 22.11.2004, 12.00 am
Presiding: Judge Klimmer




Another trial against a further accused is still to come. Since the trials have already devoured horrendous sums and are likely to devour more, we appreciate all financial support. Please donate to

P. Niederberghaus
Postbank
PLZ: 201 100 22
KtoNr: 3 200 028 797
Stichwort: “Knopfdruck Datteln”


Many thanks!

 dattelnstopp@gmx.de

More such judges

Käpt'n Bär reports that unfortunately there are more such judges. In Lüneburg one is called Dr Wettich, nicknamed "Dr Unbrauchbar" (Dr Unusable).

He had ruled that people walking peacefully on railway tracks make them “unusable”.
Which is sabotage.
And sabotage falls under § 316b Stgb, Störung öffentlicher Betriebe (Criminal Code, disruption of public operations). And that – what a coincidence! – falls under § 129a covering formation and support of a terrorist association.

Moreover, getting into the spirit of the thing, he also recognised that such a peaceful rail demo is quite clearly a coercion.
You see, the people on the track had tried to coerce a locomotive driver to run them over if need be.

That is, if the track hadn’t been closed off already, anyway, and the locomotive hadn’t stood in front of a red signal and if he’d been able to drive on at all – which is technically impossible at a red signal.

But anyway, if after he’d been informed by the operations manager that the signal was red because of a demo, he had to think about things, and that would quite clearly amount to a “threat of considerable evil”.

No joke!
With this reasoning, Dr Unusable sentenced strings of people to fines for “disrupting public operations” and “coercion”.

A great consolation on the one hand, that all judgements were overturned.
On the other hand, this type has still not been examined as to his mental accountability and is still handing down judgements.


(Adaptations by Diet Simon)