By Anne Losensky
Heinz Ostermann (66) is a bookseller, a fine spirit. He stands in the courtroom in front of the two accused neo-Nazis and says loudly: “You are not German! You are cowards, you are treacherous.” Petrified faces.
Tilo P. (39, AfD member until 2018, no criminal record) and Sebastian T. (36, former chairman of the NPD district, criminal record) are silent.
► Only two of an alleged 70 right-wing extremist attacks on dissenters in Neukölln in recent years are blamed on them. For the other cases, the evidence was insufficient.
At the time, two cars at the bookseller Ostermann went up in flames. “I could not have imagined in the wildest dreams that right-wing forces could act like this,” says the witness. “That’s why I didn’t stop my political engagement. Rather, it fueled my ambition to become democratic.”
On February 1, 2017, the car of left-wing politician Ferat Kocak (43) also caught fire and the fire spread to the house. “I woke up by accident at night, it was far too bright outside,” says the graduate economist and Berlin MP.
“I yelled my parents out of their sleep, tried to put out the fire with a fire extinguisher.” Later, a firefighter said they were very lucky, just a few minutes later the fire had spread quickly through the roof insulation.
He hadn’t noticed before that he could be in the crosshairs as a left-wing politician. “Today I am constantly on alert. My parents could have died because of my political work.”
To this day he cannot sleep in his parents’ house. Judgment on November 28th.