How victims of crime feel also has to do with how the state treats them. Whether they are protected, how they are informed. It becomes difficult when they learn that government agencies are revealing their fate to the public without them knowing it. The left-wing leader Janine Wissler, who was repeatedly threatened by a right-wing extremist who called himself NSU 2.0, also experienced this.
She herself, Wissler said on Thursday before the Frankfurt Regional Court, had kept to absolute silence – in order not to endanger the investigations, in order not to worry her family. The then Hessian state police chief informed journalists about the threats in a background discussion. “I fell out of nowhere,” said Wissler as a witness. “The State Criminal Police Office asked me not to say anything. I complied. I was a bit stunned.”
Especially when she then learned that her data had been queried in a police station – just like the data of the Frankfurt lawyer Seda Başay-Yıldız, with whose threat the series of NSU 2.0 had started. The LKA had always denied that Wissler’s data had been requested by the police.
The accused has some advice for the threatened women
A whole series of witnesses who have been threatened by NSU 2.0 have been summoned to appear before the Frankfurt Regional Court: in addition to Wissler, cabaret artist Carolin Kebekus and comedian Idil Baydar, journalists such as Anja Reschke and Maybrit Illner. Self-confident, successful women, which is obviously exactly why NSU 2.0 targeted them. The defendant Alexander M., 54, sits opposite the witnesses and looks past them with an effort.
When Wissler is asked whether she has changed her life after the death threat, she says: She made the apartment a little safer, became a little more careful. Yes, a feeling of distrust towards the police crept in. But otherwise? “I don’t think my political work has changed as a result.” The accused looks almost a little disappointed.
Then he turns it up. His lawyers still want to prevent it, but he can’t be stopped. “I don’t want to be incapacitated here,” he protests. The judge speaks to him soothingly, it’s no use. Then he requests that the lawyer Seda Başay-Yıldız and the member of the Bundestag Martina Renner, both of whom were threatened by NSU 2.0, and their lawyers should be excluded from the proceedings. You would have “fraud” the secondary prosecution. It’s all about insults and threats, it’s petty crime that doesn’t entitle anyone to a private accessory prosecution. In addition, the letters from NSU 2.0 were “only anonymous bullying on the Internet”, “at no time did it represent a real danger”.
Then the accused gives the threatened ones some advice: You could have simply ignored the emails. He sits in his place like a stubborn child. Then he says he won’t “sit there sheepishly and put up with all the impertinence.” His defenders sigh.