The unfathomable comes to life again in room E 116, on two screens. Rainer Drees, presiding judge at the Düsseldorf Regional Court, has just warned the victims of the terrible arson attack on May 11th in Ratingen about the images that are to come: Would anyone prefer to go out? Everyone stays.
The video begins. The stacked green boxes with water bottles that have blocked the apartment door are blurry. A police officer’s camera pans from the bathroom to the hallway: dark furniture, a glimmer of light. Small flames can be seen at the end of the corridor. A woman’s voice calls out: “There’s someone inside…” Cut – the video, compiled from recordings from three of the emergency services’ body cameras, changes perspective. A policewoman enters the picture, suddenly she is showered from the right with a gush of clear, glittering liquid – gasoline. She backs away, too late: you can just see a rag flying through the air. For a second or two you can still see the orange-red fire roller racing through the apartment. End.
It is quiet in room E 116, the victims present, the prosecutor and the defense attorney only slowly turn their gaze away from the screen. Alfred P., the suspected perpetrator, is also moving. The 57-year-old pensioner with tangled gray hair and a messy beard puts his right hand on his neck. Stares ahead and is silent. It was almost an hour and a half ago when the man in the dark blue shirt spoke the only sentence into the microphone, which he addressed to Judge Drees in a tinny voice that Friday morning: “I don’t want to make any statements.”
Did P. believe in conspiracy myths?
So this morning the only question that still seems to be unanswered in this trial involving nine attempted murders, grievous bodily harm and arson remains unanswered: What drove Alfred P. to pour four to six liters of fuel on nine people and set them on fire ? P. has refused to make any statement for six and a half months. After May 11th, investigators found evidence in his apartment and on his cell phone that P. had been following all sorts of conspiracy myths. And supposedly had contacts in the Reichsbürger milieu. But the police and public prosecutor’s office found nothing more than traces and evidence. On Friday, P. refused the court a gesture of respect – and remained seated at the start of the trial.
Overall, the evidence in his case appears to be overwhelming. Alfred P. was considered an oddball in the high-rise on Berliner Straße in Ratingen-West, a new development area from the 1970s. The first witness in the trial, the 30-year-old police officer G., who broke into the apartment on the tenth floor with his 25-year-old colleague on May 11th, said on Friday that a neighbor was downright “afraid” of P.: “He’s crazy!” the resident told him.
Late in the morning of May 11th, a Thursday, the property management of the apartment block raised the alarm. P. and his elderly mother had not been seen for weeks and the mailbox was overflowing. There was a mandatory arrest warrant against P.; he had not paid fines for minor bodily harm. Two police officers, four firefighters and three rescue workers responded. They ring. Policeman G. reported in court that he immediately noticed “a strong smell of decomposition.” He and his colleagues suspect suicide. Hours later, after a special operations team stormed the apartment and arrested P., it turns out: P. had left his mother, who had probably died weeks before, to rot in a wheelchair.
According to the core of the accusation on Friday, P. literally lured the emergency services into a fire trap on May 11th. “I saw my colleague completely on fire,” said police officer G. on Friday. The flames injured all nine helpers, seven lay in a coma for days and weeks, and the young policewoman only woke up after three months. Since then, everyone has been fighting their way back to life.
G. also struggled with death: “It was dark for a long time.” He suffered severe burns and his lungs were full of soot: “You first have to regain the strength to talk.” To this day, G. is plagued by scars and constant itching under the skin. And the memories of the pictures: “You have to find yourself again because you really start from scratch.”