They should have sensed it, feared it, known it. But they are said to have looked the other way and remained silent when one of their colleagues kept injecting people to their deaths. They didn’t want to admit that the doctors, nurses and orderlies were witnesses to an unimaginable series of murders – and they didn’t intervene, almost to the end. That’s why seven of them have been on trial since February – for aiding and abetting manslaughter by omission. But apparently not for much longer, as the Oldenburg District Court announced in a sensational decision on Monday.
Nurse Niels Högel probably killed around 200 people, and 85 murders were proven. In 130 suspected cases, the cause of death could no longer be clarified because the people were cremated. He himself was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2019.
The employees from the Oldenburg Clinic are mainly accused in public of having sworn Högel away with a good reference, although they already suspected it – whereupon the perpetrator immediately started in the Delmenhorst Hospital and continued to kill. But now the court has declared that the four defendants from Oldenburg should not expect a conviction. The judges see it as proven that the distrust of colleagues towards Högel continued to increase. But the court does not find it provable that the defendants remained silent intentionally, for example in order not to damage the reputation of their hospital. “From the point of view of the chamber, the evidence taken so far has not proven that the four defendants from the Oldenburg Clinic acted with sufficient certainty for a conviction,” write the judges, chaired by Sebastian Bührmann.
When was the tally of deaths created?
The court assessed a whole series of suspicions against the accused from Oldenburg as insufficient. Neither the clear uneasiness of many colleagues towards Högel is sufficient to determine intentional behavior, nor is a so-called potassium conference scheduled because of the excessive consumption of the drug. Högel had repeatedly killed with potassium at the Oldenburg Clinic. And even a tally that showed who was on duty at which deaths is not enough for the court as evidence. Högel’s supervisor had drawn up the list, and Högel led it by a wide margin. It could be that this list was created later, after Högel moved to another department of the clinic, the court said. There were no warnings to this department.
For reasons of space, the process was moved to the Weser-Ems-Hallen in Oldenburg.
(Photo: Sina Schuldt/picture alliance/dpa)
This assessment by the chamber makes it unlikely that the defendants from Oldenburg will be convicted. For a conviction not only requires knowledge of the deeds, but also the will to cover them up. And it is difficult for the doctors and nursing staff to prove it. It is still unclear what will happen next for these accused. It could be that the case against the Oldenburgers would be separated, while the accused from Delmenhorst would continue to be tried.
In the case of the three ex-superiors Högels from the Delmenhorst clinic, who were also accused, the court was more cautious because the evidence for this complex had not progressed that far. But here, too, the Chamber reports doubts between the lines as to the verifiability of the intent. In the further taking of evidence, it should therefore be checked whether witnesses could prove the accusation “that the limit of negligence to conditional intent has been exceeded”. Conditional intent means: Someone does not want the death of a patient, but accepts it according to the motto: So what?
Högel was caught red-handed in Delmenhorst. But instead of calling the police immediately, his superiors decided to let him work another shift because he was on vacation afterwards. In this shift, he killed a 67-year-old woman. The process is scheduled to last until the end of 2022. The murders in Oldenburg and Delmenhorst are considered the largest series of murders in post-war German history.