The case has caused a stir last July worried: A 35-year-old man broke the nose of Bayreuth City Councilor Halil Tasdelen with a headbutt on the street. Previously, an acquaintance of the 35-year-old Tasdelen – who apparently often appears with insults – had openly racially insulted him. At the beginning of the week, the man was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment without probation at the Bayreuth district court for dangerous bodily harm and insult; he had previously confessed to the crime in full, repeatedly apologized to Tasdelen and denied that the crime had a right-wing extremist background. The court found that he was under the influence of drugs at the time of the crime.
Tasdelen can live with the verdict. “Our constitutional state works,” he says in an interview with the SZ, adding that he “really felt sorry for the accused” in the courtroom. He has several previous convictions for various crimes, but not for incitement to hatred. In the case of Tasdelen, it was allegedly a “random victim”, the defendant had asserted in court. Tasdelen has taken note of this, he says. However, he was happy about the court’s finding that insults carried out during drug intoxication can also animate copycats. In fact, Tasdelen, 49, was racially insulted several times by email after the crime.
Tasdelen had also appeared in court as a joint plaintiff. The 35-year-old has committed there to pay a total of 4,000 euros in damages to Tasdelen. The city council will donate the money. Tasdelen is pleased to note that the accused also paid a sum of 500 euros to the “Buntstatt Braun” association. If the accused were to “get his life back on track” in the future, that would be worth a lot, he says. The verdict is not yet legally binding.
Halil Tasdelen is the brother of the Bavarian SPD General Secretary Arif Tasdelen. In the upcoming state elections, local politician Halil Tasdelen will run for the second time as an SPD candidate in Bayreuth.