By Gunnar Schupelius
The justice senator does not want to classify the last generation as a criminal organization. Your justification is not convincing and seems like a trivialization of the criminal offenses, says Gunnar Schupelius.
Berlin’s Justice Senator Felor Badenberg does not classify the Last Generation group as a criminal organization. Badenberg is non-party and was installed by the CDU. In May, she instructed her authority to check the climate stickers. The lives and everyday lives of people in Berlin are “significantly affected and sometimes endangered” by the activists, she said. It can’t go on like this.
The result of the examination was completed unusually quickly, considering how long such procedures can take in the Berlin administration.
Last week, the senator presented a 30-page assessment. Result: It is only a criminal organization if the group poses “a significant threat to public safety”. “Drug dealer rings” are cited as examples of this – or violent neo-Nazi groups such as “Storm 34”. Accordingly, the last generation should not be classified as a criminal organization.
This reasoning does not make sense. According to the Criminal Code (§ 129), a criminal organization is defined as a group “whose purpose or activity is aimed at committing criminal offences”. This is exactly the case for the members of the last generation, who have organized themselves to commit criminal acts with intent on a permanent basis.
The Criminal Code does not speak of a specific severity of the criminal offenses, which must be reached in order for the classification as a criminal organization to be justified, but in principle of the fact that criminal offenses are planned and prepared.
The justice senator could just as well have come to the conclusion that the climate stickers are very much a criminal organization.
Why is that so important? Because then completely different sanctions would be possible. Anyone who founds a criminal organization or is a member of it faces a prison sentence of up to five years. Supporters face up to three years in prison. This could put an end to the hustle and bustle of the glue.
Justice Senator Badenberg has a reputation as a committed lawyer. Previously, she worked as Vice President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. There she made sure that the AfD was classified as a “right-wing extremist suspected case” in March 2022. “I clearly stand for a differentiation from the right,” she said before she was sworn in as a senator for justice three months ago.
One would have hoped that it would also clearly differentiate itself from the left, i.e. from the climate stickers. But it doesn’t look like that, said the Berlin FDP state chairman Christoph Meyer: “The Berlin Senate remains blind in the left eye.” Yes, that’s how it seems to be.