Arafat Abou-Chaker has been on trial for a trivial matter for almost three and a half years. The defense will make its arguments on Friday. Actually, the process should never have taken so long, says our author.
Imagine if you threw a half-full plastic bottle at your best friend during an argument. Would you be charged? Would you go to court for something like that? German courts are more overloaded than the railways and cause serious delays. The judiciary has better things to do than dwell on such trifles.
But it is precisely this case that is being heard in the Berlin district court, in a court that is actually intended for serious crimes. The high court meets in the same courtroom in which Erich Honecker sat in the dock. And the process has now lasted almost three and a half years. Just as long as the Nuremberg Trials. “The case would never have been brought before the regional court if the defendant wasn’t called Arafat Abou-Chaker,” says Ria Halbritter, chairwoman of the Berlin Criminal Defense Association.
The finale of the court drama is near. In her plea, senior public prosecutor Petra Leister demanded four years and four months in prison for the defendant. The defense’s arguments are eagerly awaited today. The verdict is expected to come on February 5th.
The defendant: Arafat Abou-Chaker
Arafat Abou-Chaker is 47 years old and a German citizen. He is considered the head of a nationally known large family. Some of his brothers and cousins have been in prison several times, but he himself has no criminal record. The Berlin police have been shadowing the father of the family almost continuously for two decades. She followed him on vacations, tapped his phone and examined his accounts. After various house searches, the investigators now know every drawer in his house. The result of the XXXL investigation: expenses. Either the Berlin police are incompetent, or Arafat Abou-Chaker is not the dangerous criminal that the public prosecutor’s office portrays him to be.
From a legal point of view – and that is the only thing that the judiciary should be concerned with – there is no reason to treat citizen Abou-Chaker any differently than you or me. There is only one explanation for the fact that he still enjoys special treatment: Arafat Abou-Chaker is a member of a clan. This used to be called a clan. The indictment and the entire three-and-a-half-year trial constitute family liability.
For many years, Anis Ferchichi, better known as Bushido, and Arafat Abou-Chaker were best friends and successful business partners. Together they became rich and famous. When the friendship broke down, Bushido also wanted to go their separate ways on business matters. His ex-partner would have liked to continue earning money together. To reinforce his desire, Bushido claims, on January 18, 2018, Arafat Abou-Chaker, along with Arafat’s brothers Nasser and Yasser, locked him in his office for four hours, insulted him, threatened him and attacked him with a chair. Not to forget: the thing with the plastic bottle. That is the core of the accusation. Because a lot of money is involved, the public prosecutor’s office considers the alleged dispute to be an attempt at serious predatory extortion.
Bushido once boasted of being a gifted liar who could outwit any lie detector. The trustworthy all-rounder is the key witness for the public prosecutor’s office, with whose testimony the entire proceedings are based. Or falls. The entertainer entertained the audience in the courtroom on the witness stand for a total of 28 trial days. His wife Anna-Maria Ferchichi, who was not present at the alleged crime, was allowed to report on juicy details of her married life over the five days of the trial. During the trial, Ms. Ferchichi gave birth to triplets. The children can now walk for a long time.
The relieving sound file
The reported in February 2022 star exclusively via an audio file from the meeting in question on January 18, 2018. Arafat Abou-Chaker has since admitted that he secretly recorded several meetings with Bushido on his iPhone. “First I’ll fuck your mother, then I’ll fuck your father, then I’ll fuck your children, and when I’m done, I’ll fuck you.” That was one of the threats that Anis Ferchichi repeatedly quoted verbatim in his statements.
But the pithy words cannot be heard on the recording, nor can any of the many other insults, threats and attacks about which the key witness testified in court, some of them in tears. According to Bushido, the meeting lasted about four and a half hours. On the tape it ended after just two hours with Bushido and Arafat Abou-Chaker kissing loudly and smacking.
Any other proceedings would end at this point at the latest with the acquittal of the accused. The audio file must be seen as conclusive proof of the innocence of Arafat Abou-Chaker and that of his co-accused brothers. Such recordings are increasingly playing a role in court proceedings, but their authenticity is almost never verified. Various audio files were also admitted and played as evidence in this trial. Nevertheless, the presiding judge Martin Mrosk commissioned an independent expert from Vienna who examined this one audio file in detail over many weeks. The expert criticized the technical quality of the recording and the many background noises, but he could not detect any manipulation.
“If the public prosecutor’s office took its job seriously, it would have had to initiate an investigation against Bushido on suspicion of unsworn false statements at the latest after the expert evaluation of the tape. There is always initial suspicion,” says the chairwoman of the lawyers’ association, Ria Halbritter.
Either a fake by one or a lie by the other
There are only two possibilities: Either Bushido largely invented the course of the entire meeting and brazenly lied to the public prosecutor and the court for years. Or Arafat Abou-Chaker had the audio file falsified so professionally that even the expert couldn’t convict him. The public prosecutor’s office presented one of the two in a symbolic case against so-called “clan crime”. Both falsifying evidence and lying in court are significant crimes that require greater criminal energy than an attack with a plastic bottle. No public prosecutor’s office should allow this to happen. She must investigate who ridiculed her in court and in public.
Upon request, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office will inform you star However, she said that she is not investigating either of them in this matter. Senior public prosecutor Petra Leister asserted in her plea that she continues to believe the testimony of her key witness Anis Ferchichi. Following the laws of logic, she must inevitably assume that someone has forged the audio file. To his surprise, the prosecutor agrees star However, with: “An offense of ‘falsification of evidence’ is not known here.” In German: The public prosecutor does not consider the audio file to be a fake.
The failure to investigate due to the falsification of the audio file can safely be viewed as circumstantial evidence. The inaction shows senior public prosecutor Petra Leister’s doubts about her own case. She doesn’t really trust her key witness. Further investigations would only worsen her own loss of face, that of her agency and the detectives involved. Lid on it. The experienced huntress must have long since realized that she let herself be used by a clever Bushido actor, that she got lost in a case that wasn’t a case. Instead of admitting this, to herself and to the court, she is demanding four years and four months in prison for a defendant with the last name Abou-Chaker.
The fight against so-called “clan crime” is a very high priority for law enforcement authorities. Lighthouse cases like the one against Arafat Abou-Chaker and his brothers are intended to show young men from immigrant families how the constitutional state deals with crimes. But after the three and a half year process, what signal must reach those who are referred to as “clan members”? What lessons can they learn?
The prosecutor’s office is bending the rules to the limit. Motto: We have the perpetrator, now we just need one more act.
In court, trifles are blown up into mammoth proceedings that have nothing to do with serious crime or even organized crime.
Even evidence of innocence does not help the accused.
The length of the proceedings is the actual punishment. If you sit in the dock several times a week for years, cannot work and constantly read your name in the newspaper, in the end it is almost secondary whether you are convicted or acquitted.
Walter Wüllenweber, together with Uli Rauss and Stefan Doblinger, has been researching the Bushido/Abou-Chaker theme complex for the stern for over ten years.