German police have been accused of using illegal methods to protect a Syrian who was sentenced to probation after killing a German man, harassing the victim’s father and falsely insinuating he was a threat to the migrant.
The Dessau-Rosslau Police Inspectorate in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt has been accused of harassing 56-year-old Karsten Hempel, whose 30-year-old son Marcus Hempel was killed by a Syrian asylum seeker in 2017, by insinuating he was planning revenge against the 21-year-old migrant.
According to a report from German magazine Focus, police arrived at the workplace of Mr Hempel, who is employed in the construction sector as a manager, in December of last year and gave him a “Gefährderansprache” danger notice, a verbal warning given to people police suspect may be a danger to others.
The visit had come after Hempel had won compensation of around €25,000 (£21,700/$29,900) from Syrian Sabri H. in a civil court. The migrant, who was 17 when he killed Marcus, had been convicted of “bodily harm resulting in death” rather than murder or manslaughter and was only sentenced to probation.
Mr Hempel was not initially able to obtain the compensation, despite attempts by a bailiff to do so, as the migrant claimed he had no money or valuables to seize. He also noted that he had been living at a friend’s house — a violation of his probation order.
According to Focus, the investigation and complaints lodged by Hempel had “disturbed” the Syrian and, shortly afterwards, police had received a report that Hempel wanted to take revenge on his son’s killer.
Following the danger notice given at his work, Hempel took legal action against the police for “false suspicion, defamation, and feigning a criminal offence”. In March, the police admitted that their actions against him had been unlawful.
Focus was also able to obtain internal police emails that revealed the police knew that Hempel was not a threat to the Syrian and that the danger notice was “far beyond what is permissible in this context”.
Hempel has called the incident a “scandal”, and both he and his lawyer have pushed for the administrative court to reveal the identity of the person who claimed Hempel had been plotting against his son’s killer.
A year after the death of his son, far-left extremists heckled and harassed Mr Hempel for speaking out about the killing at a demonstration in Schweinfurt that took place after the murder of a 15-year-old girl by another asylum seeker in the town of Kandel.
In an interview, Karsten claimed that local media had made attempts to portray his son as a Nazi and that to get the truth about the killing he had to hire a lawyer to go over CCTV footage that contradicted prosecution claims that his son had engaged physically with the Syrian first.
The killing of Hempel’s son is just one of the many killings and murders of Germans, often young women and girls, by migrants and asylum seekers since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015.
In 2019, a report indicated that Germans were far more likely to be victims of crimes perpetrated by migrants than the other way around.