(The following article, signed T.D., ap peared in the May 30 issue of Was
Tun, fortnightly newspaper of the Gruppe Internationale Marxisten (GIM-International Marxist Group, German section of the Fourth International). The translation was done for Intercontinental Press by Russell Block.]
When there is public discussion about "the trial" these days, everyone knows what is meant-the proceedings against Red Army Faction members [Andreas] Baader, [Ulrike] Meinhof, [Gudrun] Ensslin, and [Jan-Carl Stefan] Raspe, which began on May 21. Actually there should have been a fifth defendant in the prisoners dock. Holger Meins died, however, during a hunger strike against the grueling conditions of pretrial confinement.
The bourgeois state is mounting a grotesque spectacle. At a cost of 12 million deutsche mark [DMI=US$0.42], a fortress was constructed especially for the trial. It is guarded by heavily armed detachments of the MEK [Mobiles Einsatz-Kommando- Mobile Strike Commandos], mounted police, and the Bundesgrenzschutz [Federal Border Guard]. Eight hundred submachine guns, rifles with telescopic sights, and bulletproof vests make up part of the equipment of this small army. A net of synthetic material reinforced with steel spread over the court building is supposed to offer protection against "remote-controlled aircraft carrying bombs."
On entering the courtroom, spectators' pockets and wallets are searched, and they are subjected to screening by an electronic metal-detector. By order of the president of the court, each person is allowed only one ballpoint pen. Obviously, these exaggerated security measures are not intended to further "the search for truth."
Of course, the constitution says that before the verdict has been returned, the accused can be regarded neither as convicted nor condemned. But these formal rights have long since ceased to apply to the RAF defendants. Bourgeois justice passed judgment and exacted punishment immediately after the arrests. Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin, and Raspe have now spent three full years in pretrial confinement. The length and severity of this imprisonment have worn them down in both body and spirit (as even the bourgeois-liberal newspapers affirm).
According to traditional bourgeois legal concepts, pretrial confinement is only meant to assure that the accused will be July 21, 1975
Der Spiegel
ULRIKE MEINHOF
available to stand trial and possibly serve a sentence. However, in the RAF case this is meaningless. The Bundestag changed the criminal-procedures code (among other things) especially for the RAF trial so that proceedings can continue even in the absence of the accused, if they should be removed for "disruptive behavior" or if they have rendered themselves "culpably incapable of standing trial." Whether the pretrial confinement itself has rendered the defendants "incapable of standing trail" does not, of course, enter into the matter.
In reality this makes pretrial confinement an instrument of terror. The organs of state power wanted to be sure that, whatever the result of the subsequent proceedings, the punishment would already come crushingly into effect through the pretrial confinement. Whenever the bourgeois state and its justice system find it politically opportune, they place themselves above their own laws.
The most drastic change in the criminalprocedures code is the measure enabling the court to exclude a defense attorney from the trial if he is suspected of being implicated in his client's criminal act." This law was used to deprive the defendant Baader of all his chosen attorneys-although so far* no legal proceedings have been initiated against excluded attorneys [Klaus] Croissant, [Christian] Ströble, and [Kurt] Groenewold in relation to the charge of "supporting a criminal conspiracy." The application of this law is thus left up to the discretion of the Criminal Senate.
Two days after the trial opened, the Second Criminal Senate ruled that the exclusion of the attorneys from the Baader defense was also applicable to the representatives of the other defendants, since the same criminal conspiracy was involved.
For months the attorney Croissant has been denied permission to visit Gudrun Ensslin. The Criminal Senate has received fifty new dossiers, but not the defense. The court named three of the "neutral" courtappointed defense attorneys only one month before the beginning of the trial. The defense attorneys-but not the judges or prosecutors—are subjected to a body search before entering the courtroom.
Who can still believe this is a fair trial in the bourgeois sense, when the court and the prosecution stand on one side and the defendants and their attorneys, with severely restricted rights, stand on the other?
Why should the bourgeois state be interested in a "fair trial" anyway? It knows that the RAF prisoners are "violent, unscrupulous criminals," "extremely dangerous terrorists," and "bandits."
Chancellor Schmidt said so publicly before the Bundestag.
And according to the Bild-Zeitung, Baader and Meinhof are "vulgar" and "raving" subhuman creatures.
The bourgeois state is organizing a show of force with pomp and publicity, thereby confirming what they have so heatedly denied-that this is a political trial.
Everyone is supposed to get the message: Resistance and struggle against the capitalist system and the bourgeois state will be severely punished. The hand of the law is always an extension of the arm of the ruling class.
Our support and solidarity extends to all political figures and victims of this system who have struggled against capitalism. And among these are, without any doubt, Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin, and Raspe-even if the methods they have chosen are totally incorrect.
Documents discussed at 1974 Tenth
World Congress of Fourth International.
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Notes
* On June 23 West German police arrested Croissant and Ströble on that charge and also searched the office of Marie-Luise Becker, an attorney for one of the defendants.-IP