Autor/Autorin
The lawyer, publicist and civil rights activist Dr Rolf Gössner has once again been successful in court. He gave an interview to the Fritz Bauer Blog before the appeal hearing before the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) of North Rhine-Westphalia. Following the appeal hearing, the court ruled on 13 March 2018 that the approximately 40 years of secret service surveillance of Rolf Gössner, which spanned his entire conscious life from his student days onwards, was disproportionate and unlawful.
„With this judgement, the OVG NRW rejected the appeal of the Federal Government and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and fully confirmed the first-instance judgement of the Administrative Court of Cologne of 3 February 2011,“ reads a statement further disseminated by the International League for Human Rights: „The OVG NRW has also certified that the domestic intelligence service has violated the constitutional principle of proportionality and essential fundamental rights of the plaintiff and person concerned, Dr Rolf Gössner, for decades.“
After more than twelve years of tough proceedings in two instances, which challenged Rolf Gössner’s entire stamina, the OVG NRW stated, among other things, that there had been no „actual indications“ of anti-constitutional endeavours during the entire observation period from 1970 to 2008. Nor were there any indications that Dr Gössner had allegedly supported left-wing extremist organisations. The observation was „disproportionate in view of the encroachments on fundamental rights that it entailed“.
Rolf Gössner’s legal representative, lawyer Dr Udo Kauß (Freiburg), who supported the trial on behalf of the civil rights organisation Humanistische Union, commented: „The two judgments of the Administrative Court of Cologne and the Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia are milestones in the fight against an intrusive domestic intelligence service. A secret service has no place in the sphere of opinion. This applies to all citizens – especially those subject to professional secrecy, as the protection of professional secrets cannot be guaranteed under conditions of surveillance.“
In his personal statement to the OVG, which can be read in full here, Rolf Gössner explained:
„The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s submissions to the court are steeped in Cold War thinking, are illiberal testimonies of a secret institution which, under the label of ‚protection of the constitution‘, has become an ideological and inquisitorial opinion-checking authority in a way that is incompatible with the constitution and the fundamental rights to freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of association. To argue at such a level in court in a one-sided ideologically charged procedure is downright Kafkaesque, has a censoring and anti-democratic flavour that hardly fits in with a liberal democratic society – and which the defendant claims to want to protect.“
In conclusion, Dr Gössner regretted „that so much time and energy has been wasted on this nonsensical and absurd surveillance story and that two courts have already had to deal with such complex proceedings for the second decade. But this effort is unfortunately necessary in order to shed at least a little light on the darkness, to obtain rehabilitation and to curb such rampant secret service activities in accordance with the rule of law“. (PDF of the statement )
As Dr Krauß explains, the decision of the OVG is certainly significant for the data storage practices of the constitution protection authorities, especially for the sixteen state constitution protection offices, which also explains the massive criticism levelled by the constitution protection authorities at the judges of the first instance. The state offices for the protection of the constitution „are the actual data suppliers for the files of the Federal Office“, says Krauß, „and the joint intelligence information system NADIS operated by the latter. Their data stores are overflowing. An investigation by the task force set up by the red-green state government in Lower Saxony in 2014 found that 40 per cent of the data stored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was wrongly stored and should be deleted. With the judgement now available, the pressure on the secret services to take back their role as secret opinion police, if not to stop it altogether, is growing.“
The reasons for the judgement are not yet available. The OVG has authorised an appeal to the Federal Administrative Court due to its „fundamental importance“. It remains to be seen whether the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution will take the appeal route, and until then the judgement of the OVG is not legally binding. The disproportionate and unlawful surveillance story and its judicial processing are therefore not yet over.