Of course, the "Last Generation" is a criminal organization

After the public prosecutor's office in Berlin, the general public prosecutor's office has now also rejected the initiation of investigations into the "formation of a criminal organization" against activists of the "last generation". This was preceded by numerous criminal charges, including by Berlin CDU MP Christopher Förster.

The reluctance of the criminal prosecutors is astonishing insofar as the facts of the case appear to have been fulfilled without a doubt. It reads: "Anyone who founds an association or participates as a member in an association whose purpose or activity is aimed at the commission of criminal offenses punishable by imprisonment of up to five years or a fine shall be punished are threatened.”

Now the “Last Generation” is undoubtedly an association that has made committing crimes almost a program. The crimes typically committed in their actions (damage to property, coercion, resistance to law enforcement officers) also carry maximum sentences of two or three years.

The fact that the public prosecutor's office still refuses to investigate has to do with the special nature of the "formation of a criminal organization". Normally, only those who violate or endanger the legal interests of others, or at least try to do so, are liable to prosecution. The fact that several people were involved in a crime can have an aggravating effect (e.g. in the case of gang theft or robbery) – but the perpetrators are still convicted (only) because of the crime they committed together.

In the case of the “formation of a criminal organisation”, on the other hand, the association with the aim of committing criminal offenses is already punishable, although no one is harmed by this alone. This shifting of criminal liability to an early planning stage is easy to justify when it comes to the (each separately standardized) “formation of armed groups” or “formation of terrorist organizations”, since such organizations obviously pose a high risk potential. In such cases, it would be absurd if prosecutors could only investigate after the armed group or terrorist organization has actually struck.

"We know that there are flat-sharing communities that have clearly given the commitment," says WELT investigative editor Lennart Pfahler about "Last Generation". According to those who have dropped out, the group of self-proclaimed climate activists functions like a cult on an emotional level.

Source: WORLD

In the case of “formation of a criminal organization”, on the other hand, the only limitation provided by the law is that the maximum sentence for the planned crime must be at least two years. Since this is the case with almost all crimes, an association that intends to steal chewing gum on a regular basis, or a club or group of friends that intends to organize weekly poker games would also be punishable. Since that would obviously be exaggerated and disproportionate, the specialist literature and jurisprudence also require that the crimes that the "criminal organization" plans to commit must pose a "significant threat to public safety".

The downside of this fundamentally sensible restriction is that no one can say when it will apply. This is not due to the characteristic of "public security", which literally includes everything that the legal system in Germany considers worth protecting, but to the question of when this should now be "considerably endangered".

The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) affirmed this, for example, in the case of violent squatters, left-wing extremist autonomists who organized violent protests, or a sub-organization of the Kurdish PKK, which forged identity papers and threatened "demonstrative crimes". On the other hand, he denied it in the case of associations whose purpose was to illegally recruit workers or to stick and spray-paint right-wing extremist slogans.

According to another BGH ruling on a right-wing extremist group, the latter, in turn, should very well be sufficient for the “considerable endangerment of public safety”. Namely, if this increases the readiness for violent attacks by third parties and gives foreigners the feeling that they cannot stay safely in Germany. Why this was the case in one case and not in the other can only be explained by the fact that the last-named group acted in the early 1990s in a particularly heated atmosphere after the fall of the Wall and marked by a series of right-wing extremist acts of violence.

It is true that the current discourse on the necessity and reasonableness of climate protection measures is heated; and it is undoubtedly being exacerbated by actions such as those of the “Last Generation” – however, there have not yet been any outright riots on the part of one side or the other, fueled by the activists.

In addition, the climate activists themselves rely exclusively on non-violent protest and their traffic blockades are no longer covered by freedom of assembly, but are at least located in their vicinity. The Berlin public prosecutor's offices therefore regard the movement as an illegitimate but ultimately harmless form of political protest that does not pose any major dangers.

This is understandable, but not convincing.

On the one hand, with every blockade action, the risk increases that one of the drivers will lose his nerve and beat the activists who are glued to the hospital, or even run them over them. That would be his independent, punishable decision, but it would also be directly provoked by the traffic disruptions. It is easy to imagine what the reactions to such an incident would mean for public safety.

Incidentally, “public security” by no means only includes protection against riots, but, as I said, basically all values ​​protected by the legal system. The temporary impairment of the freedom of movement of individual drivers caught in traffic jams may not yet be "significant". The very fundamental loss of confidence in the passability of public roads as a result of more and more blockades, especially in the Berlin city area, is definitely the case.

Finally, “public safety” also includes citizens' trust in the validity of democratic decision-making. The serial commission of criminal offenses for the purpose of blackmailing political decision-makers calls this democratic decision-making process into question. If you add the color attacks on the headquarters of the governing parties and the staged arrest of a double of FDP leader Christian Lindner, the activists' contempt for democracy becomes obvious.

It should only be a matter of time before the next group feels inspired to try to push through their own demands by means of political crime instead of finding a democratic majority. The self-empowerment of a militant political movement, which has been going on for months, has been highly effective in the media and has been completely inadequately sanctioned by the judiciary, ultimately threatens to lose trust in the state's ability to defend itself and in the validity of democratic rules. A greater threat to public safety can hardly be imagined.

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