I have been an anarchist for decades and I was arrested in October 1996 after a bank robbery, no one was killed or heavily injured. But since that time the state has kept me in prison. On 8th July 2013 I was deported to the ‚Preventative Detention‘ (PD) Unit in the south west of Germany. The PD is something like the IPP in the UK, but PD became law in 1933 by the Nazis and allows the state to keep someone in prison after finishing their sentence, as long as the inmate is supposed to be a threat to public safety. I was judged as a threat to public safety because at the end of the 90’s and beginning of the 2000’s I was agitating strongly against judges and politicians. So I was convicted to more than 5 years punishment. For the bank robbery the court sentenced me to prison for 11 ½ years. The regular sentence ended on 7th July 2013.
Back to the present time: In 2022 a psychiatrist expert from Munich. In her 130 page report the expert came to the conclusion that I would be no threat. In November 2022 a psychologist from the prison and the public prosecutor sent their statements to the court and criticised the expert’s report really hard. But the psychiatrist replied on 17 pages and refuted their arguments.
But the local court in Freiburg, under the presidency of the honourable judge Kronthaler, dissented from the expert’s view. After a two hour hearing on the 15th February 2023 the court informed the parties and gave an order for another expert.
The expert from Munich has been testifying for courts for more than 40 years! But she’s more open minded than her conservative colleagues. For her it wasn’t relevant that I never distanced myself from my past nor my biography and political attitudes.
Friends offered me a place where I could live in town and a local radio station (https://rdl.de/) admitted me into the editorial office. They also offered practical training after my release. Until this takes place I get the possibility to be part of their program by phone, because here at the PD unit we have a phone in the cells. So every month I am on the air. A program called AUSBRUCH (escape/breakout) in which we talk about prisoner’s situations and developments.
The fact that there aren’t any troubles since more than two decades seems not enough for the court, the prison’s administration and the prosecutor. Especially the prison’s psychologist criticized that I had never withdrawn my attitudes. So she and her colleagues were afraid that I would maybe take revenge on judges or politicians. It leaves me in a catch-22.
Anyway, I think an upright attitude is more important than falling on your knees!
Thomas Mayer-Falk
c/o JVA (SV),
Hermann-Herder-Str. 8,
79104 Freiburg,
Germany
https://freedomforthomas.wordpress.com
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