Reiner Fuellmich political prisoner

A report about prison conditions in his own words from BAM!

- REINER FUELLMICH

A REPORT by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich about his prison conditions in the Göttingen high-security prison in Rosdorf, in response to the author Kerstin Heusinger, German correspondent for the French language online publication BAM!

7:00 a.m., court date for civil rights' activist and lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich:

Heavily armed officers with pistols and submachine guns, equipped with bulletproof vests, receive me. They try to convince me to put on a bulletproof vest, which I consistently refuse. They then make me sign a waiver that releases them from liability if I am injured or killed by gunfire.

One of the officers searches my body and then, as always, forces me to kneel on a stool while he puts shackles on my legs.

He ties a wide leather belt around my waist and then puts handcuffs on me that are attached to the belt with chains, which in turn are secured with a large padlock.

The shackles force me to take very small steps, which makes it difficult to get in and out of the transport vehicle. If I were to stumble while shackled like this, I would not be able to break my fall and would probably break my wrists.

Prison officials told me they had never seen a defendant held in pre-trial detention for more than 11 months for a minor offence (rather than a serious crime or an act of terrorism), kept in solitary confinement and, most importantly, brought to court with his hands and feet shackled.

In court I was taken to the basement, to a tiled cell with a simple wooden bench, the basement is cynically called 'the cellar'. Another body search. Then I have to wait until I am led into the courtroom in handcuffs. Every time the trial is interrupted I am handcuffed again and taken back to the cellar.

Every time I returned from court, I was completely undressed in a transit room so that a thorough body search could be carried out.