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Online seit:	Fri Sep  4 00:24:38 1998

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Declaration
16 July 1998

1. The acquittal of Safwan Eid by the Court was a welcome vindication of this young man, concerning whose prosecution the Commission has throughout expressed the gravest reservations.

2. It will also be recalled that on 8 May 1997 the Commission re-emphasised concern that the original suspects, four young men from Grevesmühlen with a background of neo-Nazi activity, had been released without charge following the arson attack although the evidence against them, which included recent scorch marks on the heads of three of them, appeared much stronger than the very flimsy - and in the Commission’s opinion manifestly inadequate - evidence against Safwan Eid.

3. On 8 April 1998 the representative of the State Prosecutor announced that on 23 February 1998 one of the original suspects, Maik Wotenow, had confessed to the crime and claimed that the other three original suspects were jointly responsible with him.

4. It was further stated by the representative that Wotenow had retracted his confession 3 days later but that nevertheless the Lubeck Prosecutor’s office had ordered that the four suspects be interrogated as to their responsibility in the matter.

5. The Commission welcomes the renewal of the investigation of the role of the Grevesmuhlen four. It has already drawn attention to the weight of evidence of their involvement in the arson attack which already existed before the recent statements of Maik Wotenow. The collapse of the prosecution of Safwan Eid highlights the fact that those truly responsible are still unpunished. That misguided prosecution has done much damage to the reputation of the German system of criminal justice.

6. The Commission does not, of course, claim that the Grevesmuhlen four were in fact guilty of the crime. That can be discovered only by the vigorous an unbiased pursuit of the investigation, which, after so long a delay, must now be urgently revived.

International Independent Commission
July 1998