A judgment by the Munich Higher Regional Court (OLG) from 2020, which sentenced ten Turkish communists to prison terms as members of a foreign terrorist group, is final. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has dismissed appeals by the accused against the verdict as unfounded, as the court announced on Friday in Karlsruhe (Az. 3 StR 68/22).
It was a long and expensive trial: a trial against ten Turkish communists in Munich lasted more than four years. Almost three years after the verdict, the Federal Court of Justice had the last word. In July 2020, the Higher Regional Court sentenced the nine men and one woman of Turkish and Kurdish descent to prison terms, some of them long, after more than four years of trial. It concluded that they had raised money, organized events and recruited members for the Turkish Communist Party/Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML). The armed arm of the group in Turkey was also supported with the money in order to enable the continuation of the guerrilla warfare there, according to the verdict.
The court sentenced the main defendant to six and a half years in prison for being a ringleader in a terrorist organization abroad. The 60-year-old coordinated the group’s activities in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, England, Holland and Belgium. The other defendants got between two years and nine months and five years for membership in a terrorist group abroad. They were not involved in the attacks. However, they would have promoted the association and were aware of the terrorist orientation. The defense attorneys had demanded acquittals or the termination of the proceedings.
The TKP/ML, founded in the 1970s and split into groups, is waging a sometimes militant struggle against the Turkish state. In Germany, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution observes them, but they are not illegal. Lawyers for the accused had therefore criticized the procedure, among other things, as “commissioned work for Turkey”. The revisions dealt, among other things, with whether the Higher Regional Court was allowed to use certain observation reports. But even “the comprehensive re-examination of the judgment prompted by the factual complaints” did not “reveal any errors of law to the detriment of the accused”.