Status: 02/16/2022 05:17 a.m
The “Ibiza video” triggered a political earthquake in Austria. Julian Hesselthaler, the man behind the video, also ended up in court. The process has met with harsh criticism. The judgment could already come today at the regional court in St. Pölten.
Elegant suit, crew cut, handcuffs: This is how the former detective Julian Hessenthaler appears in the courtroom in St. Pölten. He himself doesn’t like the term detective, preferring to talk about having worked in the field of “private intelligence”. His most momentous project to date was also created in this industry in the summer of 2017: the so-called “Ibiza video”, which triggered a political earthquake in Austria.
Srdjan Govedarica
ARD Studio Vienna
Hessenthaler prepared a rented finca on Ibiza with cameras and microphones and let the then FPÖ chairman Heinz-Christian Strache fall into the trap. A Russian fake oligarch elicited momentous statements from him that exposed him as quite open to corruption and other shady dealings. Strache then resigned from all offices and has now ended his political career. The polls for his FPÖ plummeted at times, there were snap elections and far-reaching corruption investigations.
An almost endless pool of chat messages gradually appeared on confiscated smartphones, causing distress for a number of high-ranking politicians and revealing a shocking picture of the state of Austrian domestic politics. As a long-term consequence of the Ibiza video, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz finally resigned in October 2021.
Investigators’ priorities
A political super-GAU with criminal relevance – but so far only one person is in prison who had anything to do with the Ibiza video: Julian Hessenthaler. Remarkable: The so-called “SOKO tape” put three investigators on Strache’s willingness to corruption, posts and infidelity expressed in the Ibiza video. On the other hand, 17 officers investigated the people behind the video: Among other things, against Julian Hessenthaler. Annemarie Schlack from the Vienna office of the organization Amnesty International finds this alarming:
Here the question arises, where is the proportionality? Is a scapegoat being sought here? Is someone here for political reasons who was critical, who brought information to light that was very decisive for Austrian politics – is an example being made here?
doubts about the witnesses
Hessenthaler was eventually arrested in Germany and extradited to the Austrian authorities. He has now been in custody for 14 months. The charge has nothing to do with Ibiza. The public prosecutor accuses Hessenthaler of selling 1.25 kilograms of “narcotics, namely cocaine with a purity of at least 70 percent”. With extremely thin evidence, says Oliver Scherbaum, Hessenthaler’s lawyer:
There are no tape recordings, no narcotics have been found, there is no other evidence, but the suspicion is based exclusively on the testimonies of these two – to put it mildly – somewhat dubious witnesses for the prosecution, who repeatedly contradicted each other during the proceedings and accused each other of being liars and mentally ill have designated.
This is obviously not a problem for the court; in the drug scene, contradicting testimonies are the order of the day. Hessenthaler’s defense attorney Scherbaum also criticizes that money of 55,000 euros was paid to the two witnesses – from the environment of the gaming company Novomatic, which got into trouble as a result of the Ibiza video.
The inconsistencies in the criminal proceedings against Hessenthaler prompted human rights organizations to take concerted action at the end of last year: in an open letter, 15 Austrian and international NGOs criticized the “excessive criminal prosecution” and expressed serious concerns that Hessenthaler would not receive a fair trial. So does Annemarie Schlack from Amnesty International:
What we are observing in Austria is a trend. A trend towards intimidating critical voices. We see this in lawsuits against individuals, against journalists, against the media. And here Julian Hessenthaler has a special role, because what he uncovered was a scandal that shook the republic to the core.
14 months in prison
The court comments at the request of ARD Studios Vienna not to the allegations that this is a show trial intended to silence a politically undesirable person. Don’t comment on ongoing proceedings. Lawyer Oliver Scherbaum emphasizes that there must be an urgent suspicion of a crime in order to be allowed to keep a person in custody. For him, this is not the case with Hessenthaler:
As you can imagine, he’s not doing very well. It’s not nice when you’re wrongly held in prison for 14 months. But he remains confident that at the end of the day the case will end well for him and the truth will come out. Namely, that the allegations made against him are all false and constructed.