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Online seit:	Fri Sep  4 00:28:17 1998

Anwaltsbüro

Gabriele Heinecke • Martin Klingner • Karen Mücher • Sigrid Töpfer • Ulrich Wittmann

2 a Kls 29/96

In the trial
against
Safwan E i d

the defence states according to § 257 StPO:

the gathering of evidence allows the thesis that the home for asylum-seeking persons in the Hafenst. 52 was set on fire by a third party which used a substance to enhance the fire on -maybe among other places- the wooden front extension of the house and that this substance to enhance the fire might even have been used inside and outside. Would the prosecution and the LKA like these facts, surely everybody would speak of a "fire image that is made in such a significant way" that it would prove the arson "even without traces of an inflammable liquid" (as is the argument for the first floor as the place where the fire started , Bd. KTU, pg. 185ff.)

The witnesses Marwan Eid (court hearing 16/9/96) and Jinan Eid (court hearing 18/9/96) who were sleeping in the room located in the first floor diagonally opposite above the wooden extension in the night of the 17th to the 18th January 1996, both said concurrently, that they woke up from a rattling sound and noise of an explosion, that they got up immediately and saw fire through the side window of the wooden extension.

The witness Ronny Bittner said in the court hearing 30/9/96 that he was woken up by his fellow pupil Maik Preuße around 03.30 hrs. Both had been the first people at the place of the fire. The BGS-bus had at first driven slowly by, then the fire brigade arrived. The witness reported only the extension had been on fire, the flames had been very high. The outer layer of the extension had been on fire, too. There had been no flames coming out of the window then.

Fire fighters from the fire engine that arrived several minutes later from the fire station 2 with the men on duty Kläber, Lasecki, Steffen and Themel as well as the co-ordinators that arrived with them (Schiemann, Lafin, Lammers, Lieberum) see these high flames no more but describe a fire inside the extension. The witness Steffen, the first person at the fire and as a fire fighter making his way into the extension and on to the first floor, described at the last day of the trial both areas as covered in flames. Even the stone wall in the staircase and the stone stairs themselves had been on fire. The wall had been extremely hot and must have been soaking in heat for some time.

These descriptions allow the conclusion that, after the substance to enhance the fire was used, first there was a very severe and hot phase of the fire and then -after the liquid or solid substance was used up- the fire went on "naturally", meaning burning combustible materials in the wooden extension, in the staircase and on the first floor. The wood was cold during the winter weather and presumably also rather damp. If in this situation an extremely dense smoke can develop needs to be

Even though they knew these statements, the prosecution and the LKA did nothing, not even taking the samples from the outside wall of the extension and from the stone staircase leading up to the first floor, to make such it possible to test such a likely scenario. On the 19/1/96 it was already decided that the -because of the whole circumstances very suspect- young persons from Grevesmühlen were no longer to be prosecuted. All possibilities to at least find out more about a possible arson were not done. After Safwan Eid was arrested on the 19/1/96 because of a supposed "wir warn's" and further, not correlating, assertions by the witness Leonhardt and because of a made-up `knowledge only the perpetrator could have had`, no further inquiries were made which might have been exonerating.

According to the hearing of evidence up to today, especially the statements of the witnesses Steffen (hearing 9/10/96) and Gouin (hearing 7/10/96), it must be concluded that at the arrival of the first fire men the door in the wooden extension was melted/burnt down already - or that it must have been wide open. The first would again be a sign proving a hot fire inside the extension going on for a long time, the second a hint that in this night everybody could have got into Hafenst. 52.

The theory of the prosecution and the LKA, the fire in the wooden extension could be interpreted "without any contradictions" as a "result of the fire" started on the first floor; the extension was set on fire by parts of the wooden stairs which fell down, has never been comprehensible and is fallen to pieces for good after the statement of the witness Steffen. The witness Steffen has stated in his questioning in court that he had had flames above him and had extinguished them above him while he came up the stairs to the first floor. This can only mean, that the wooden stairs in the staircase were still in place.

After the acknowledgement -which came too late for Safwan Eid- of a now longer reconstructable time at which the fire started, this was the prosecution's last straw. Under these -not at all new- circumstances, it was not the prosecution's job to make up endless new alibis for the men from Grevesmühlen, but it should have saved in time those traces/proves which could have lead to an early solving of the case.