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Germany: 60 per cent of G8 investigations dropped

01 January 2008

The German public prosecution service has announced that 955 of the 1,474 preliminary investigations initiated by police in relation to the G8 summit last summer have been dropped do far for lack of evidence. Legal teams present at the protests describe the high number of arrests and low conviction rate as a scandal that shows that many arrests were unwarranted and violated the right to demonstrate. Furthermore, many protesters spent days in prison and had personal belongings confiscated and not returned. Others suffered violence at the hands of the police. The German judicial system makes compensation claims difficult and they are largely unsuccessful because of the lowered threshold for the police to arrest people without evidence of criminal activity or even intent.

Besides many investigations being dropped, those who are prosecuted are often faced with ludicrous charges: Alexander S. was accused of bearing "passive arms" and the prosecution demanded a fine of 160 euro because he carried a mouth guard on him. He explained: "I didn't want my teeth to be kicked in", a reasonable precaution given the history of summit policing in Genoa and the infamous Diaz school incident. The judge who summoned him to court admitted during proceedings that it could not count as passive arms and cleared him of the charges. Another police tactic was to confiscate scarves from protestors at a demonstration in order to present them as evidence for the intent to disguise oneself, which is illegal under German law. One woman was given an 11-month prison sentence without probation in an accelerated trial procedure for allegedly having thrown a stone.

So far, 44 demonstrators have been sentenced; 41 have received fines and three received suspended prison sentences.

http://gipfelsoli.org; http://www.globalinfo.nl; Süddeutsche Zeitung 5/6.1.08; For an overview of court cases and trial dates see ,a href="http://www.ermittlungsausschuss.antifa.net">http://www.ermittlungsausschuss.antifa.net