By Anne Losensky
Annoyed by ringing, a family man from Spandau takes on two boys from the neighborhood. That costs him 500 euros.
Tiergarten District Court. Accused: Graduate engineer Ghasan T. (56).
Charge: assault. On June 4, 2021, around 8 p.m., the academic is said to have followed and caught two schoolboys, then 11 and 12 years old, after ringing the bell in the tranquil terraced house settlement.
The prosecution speaks of handshakes in the neck and a hit with a wooden stick that happened to be lying around there. Painful for both children, they say.
The father denies the beatings
The computer scientist, himself a father of three children: “I just yelled at the boys, didn’t hit them!” The neighborhood had been terrorized with ringtones for six months. That evening he ran after the boys and caught up with them: “I was loud. I’m sorry if you were scared. But I would never raise my hand against a child!”
After that he installed a video camera and it has been quiet ever since. Two years passed before the trial, an incredibly long time for children. Today, the boys no longer remember exactly who was hit and where. They get caught up in contradictions.
The judge: “There was probably more than the defendant is telling here. But less than the children said.” The academic pays 500 euros to SOS Children’s Villages, and then the proceedings are discontinued.
A father, outraged: “He got away with it again with a black eye!”