Berlin public prosecutor's office does not see "Last Generation" as a criminal organization

The actions of the "last generation" climate activists are heating up tempers more than ever. The chairman of the CSU state group in the Bundestag, Alexander Dobrindt, recently thought the group was on the way to the "Climate RAF". The Hessian Minister of the Interior, Roman Poseck (CDU), called for the activists to be punished as terrorists "under certain circumstances".

The Berlin prosecution authorities have now rejected the call for a tougher legal approach. An initial suspicion for the classification of the "last generation" as a "criminal organization" is currently not recognizable, said the spokesman for the Berlin Attorney General, Sebastian Büchner, at the request of WELT.

The Berlin public prosecutor's office, which is subordinate to the Berlin general public prosecutor's office, had already come to the same conclusion after a criminal complaint in June of this year and had discontinued the corresponding investigation. The advertiser appealed against this decision.

According to Büchner, the public prosecutor's office rejected this complaint last week and thus confirmed the previous decision of the public prosecutor's office. In justification, the spokesman said that the seriousness of the crimes committed by members of the "Last Generation" did not justify the Criminal Code's requirements for classification as a criminal organization.

The formation of a criminal organization is standardized in Section 129 of the Criminal Code as a separate criminal offence. Such a classification would mean considerable consequences for the “last generation”. Its members could be sentenced to prison terms of up to five years. In addition, activists of the group could also be penalized for providing support and even for simply being a part of it.

According to the Criminal Code, a group can only be considered a criminal organization if "their purpose or activity is aimed at committing crimes that carry a maximum penalty of at least two years' imprisonment". According to the law, the crimes committed by group members must therefore be particularly serious.

The activists of the "Last Generation", on the other hand, have so far been convicted of coercion or resistance to law enforcement officials. In judicial circles it is also pointed out that paragraph 129 is mainly applied when criminal offenses can be assigned to a group but not to specific individuals. In the case of the "last generation", however, this assignment has always been possible so far.

According to Büchner, when the public prosecutor's office checked whether there was an initial suspicion of the formation of a criminal organization, the authority not only took into account the individual facts about which the complaint from mid-June was concerned. Rather, the more recent actions of the "last generation", such as the attacks on works of art and the blockade of the feeder road to BER Airport, were also included in the examination. Overall, there was no initial suspicion that a criminal organization was being formed.

The intrusion of the activists onto the tarmac of the capital's BER airport on Thursday last week only took place after the examinations of the general public prosecutor's office had been completed. Judicial circles said, however, that this action could not give rise to any initial suspicion of the formation of a criminal organization. Because the intrusion could probably only be assessed as property damage and trespassing. On the other hand, there was probably no dangerous intervention in air traffic because the activists had not penetrated the runways. The action did not lead to a dangerous situation.

The chairman of the "Good Governance" union, the former Berlin FDP MP Marcel Luthe, considers the legal assessment of the Attorney General's Office of the "last generation" to be wrong - and hopes for a reassessment.

When the activists blocked the access road to BER Airport, Luthe himself was affected by the action. About a week and a half ago, he reported the activists for forming a criminal organization. Because the type of inspection - such as renting several vehicles, the detailed planning and the agreements made during the campaign - speak for action within the meaning of paragraph 129, argues Luthe. There is, as Luthe sees it, at least an initial suspicion. He demands that the public prosecutor's office must identify the people behind the group and the financiers.

Luthe described the climate activists as “criminals”. They caused "many people" suffering, "if they have to wait for the ambulance, for example, and the pain is unnecessarily prolonged," said Luthe.

Luthe considers the illegal intrusion on the BER site to be a "dangerous intervention in air traffic" punishable by law - contrary to what has been reported from legal circles. In addition to being classified as a criminal organization, "the formation of a terrorist organization would obviously also be an option," said Luthe.

The Berlin Public Prosecutor's Office doesn't see it that way at the moment. But that could change. The spokesman for the Berlin Public Prosecutor's Office Büchner told WELT: "Depending on the criminal relevance of further actions, the current assessment will have to be checked again and again in the future."