[ad_1]
Ralph Willms’s body trembles. The lawyer hides his face, but the relief still shows. When the court pronounces the decisive words shortly after 12 noon, his upper body is shaken by silent sobs. “The following verdict is issued on behalf of the people: The accused is acquitted.”
According to the conviction of the Ninth Grand Criminal Chamber of the Regional Court of Aachen, it was not lawyer Willms who found a victim of the nail bomb attack on the Keupstrasse in Cologne for the NSU trial. The court was convinced that it was Atilla Ö., A real victim of the Keupstrasse bombing. Only he invented the woman named Meral Keskin. Atilla Ö. has been dead since September 2017.
Willms, the 53-year-old attorney for Eschweiler today, represented the specter of the secondary prosecution for two and a half years and for more than 230 days in NSU’s trial before the Munich Higher Regional Court. The Aachen Regional Court Chamber states that the defendant has violated almost all legal duties, which is why Willms threatens to lose his license as a lawyer. But this decision is not a criminal court, but the Superior Court of Lawyers.
It is “unquestionable”, says presiding judge Melanie Theiner, that the lawyer made “great mistakes” and acted with “gross negligence.” But that is not enough for a fraud conviction. The law does not recognize negligent fraud. “In other words: negligent fraud is not punishable.”
He also referred to his mother as a customer.
To convict someone of fraud, the court must be satisfied that the defendant acted deliberately, at least with conditional intent. However, the judges are not convinced that Willms has deliberately misled or even accepted that his client does not exist.
According to the court, Atilla Ö. brought two false victims to the NSU trial as co-plaintiffs: his mother and his alleged friend, Meral Keskin. Atilla Ö. I knew from personal experience that the federal government pays victims of NSU 5,000 euros each. And I knew that there are lawyers who are very interested in participating in this “trial of the century.” Atilla Ö. It is said that he has promised money for the mediation of injunctions.
He placed his mother as a client of an elderly Cologne lawyer, despite the fact that the Chamber was convinced that she was not a victim of the NSU attack. The mother, who has also died in the meantime, was a joint plaintiff in the NSU trial for seven days. When two lawyers bitterly quarreled over his tenure, Atilla Ö’s lawyers took care of it. that the mother withdraw her appeal for accessory accusation. Meral Keskin remained a joint plaintiff. It was not until October 2015 that the fraud was revealed through a SPIEGEL investigation.
Willms requested and received 25 advance payments between 2013 and 2015 for his phantom activity. A total of 211,252.54 euros in fees, expenses and per diem. Willms has to return the money. The acquittal does not change that. He stutters the installment amount. He still owes the taxpayer around 140,000 euros.
Willms has also requested compensation of 5,000 euros from the federal government victims fund for Meral Keskin. The responsible Federal Office of Justice paid him. The Public Ministry evaluated both cases – request for admission to an accessory trial and request for compensation – as serious fraud in the crime unit with falsification of documents. According to the prosecution, Willms knew that a medical certificate he presented to prove Meral Keskin’s injuries had been falsified.
“The alarm bells shouldn’t have rung yet”
The Regional Court of Aachen sees it differently. Willms has the information on Atilla Ö. “Blindly familiar.” For the question of fraud or not, only the moment in which Willms applied to the Higher Regional Court of Munich, on the one hand, the admission of the secondary action and, on the other hand, three months later to the Federal Office of Justice is relevant. to obtain compensation. Did Willms have any doubts about the existence of Meral Keskin at this time? No, thinks the court. “The alarm bells shouldn’t have sounded yet.”
The judge tracks what happened. Willms received a call from a fellow lawyer in Cologne in April 2013. He was in contact with Atilla Ö. and he wanted to represent his mother as a joint plaintiff in the process. The lawyer told Willms that there was another victim of the Keupstrasse attack, Meral Keskin. Willms met with Atilla Ö. and got, among other things, a forged certificate.
The court found that the false certificate was so obviously forged that it spoke out against the defendant. However, this incriminating evidence is “neutralized” by the fact that Willms was offered the Keskin mandate by a fellow attorney. In the court’s view, Willms apparently did not have to think that this attorney was offering him a false injunction. Willms doesn’t want to have properly examined the fake certificate. The House does that for him too. In any case, assume that the attorney has never read NSU’s files. Otherwise, you might have noticed that the name Meral Keskin was nowhere to be found.
However, the court does not see the defendant just as failing. “Not only did Mr. Willms not do his job.” The Senate of the Munich Higher Regional Court, chaired by Manfred Götzl, the Cologne Public Prosecutor, the Federal Office of Justice and the Aachen Public Prosecutor, failed.
-
“The Higher Regional Court of Munich had everything in mind”: the false certificate, the contradictions, the inconsistencies. However, the Senate was fooled for years.
-
Cologne Prosecutor’s Office against Atilla Ö. investigated for fraud, he should have realized at some point that his mother was not a victim of the Keupstrasse attack either.
-
The Federal Office of Justice “at least hesitated”, but then paid the 5,000 euros in compensation to a ghost, fearing that Meral Keskin, if it happened, would turn to the media and complain about the refusal to pay compensation.
“Ultimately, no authority saw any reason to ask the defendant what the certificate or deviant descriptions were about,” the presiding judge said.
The court also acquitted the defendant of the charge of attempted fraud in connection with the Loveparade trial. Willms had applied for the admission as a joint plaintiff of a young man to the Duisburg Regional Court. According to the prosecution, the man was not a victim of the 2010 Love Parade disaster. In the end, Willms had withdrawn his request for assignment, for which he was only charged with attempted fraud. But the court does not see any fraud at all, has not even tried one. It is not entirely clear that the young man was not injured at the time. “And if that is not safe, then it is not attempted fraud.”
The court was also unable to determine that the defendant had passed another Loveparade mandate to a Cologne lawyer without his client’s consent. The court assumes that Willms thought the woman agreed with this. “And if he thinks everything is fine, then that is not a fraud.” Because then there is no resolution in this case either.
The verdict is not yet legally binding. The prosecution had demanded two years of probation as a total sentence and a two-year professional ban in the field of criminal law. You can appeal against the sentence.
