Affair of betrayal of secrets: prosecutors accuse ex-vice police union

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Ex-Union Vice Nommensen: Charged with treason

Photo: Carsten Rehder / picture alliance / dpa

The Kiel public prosecutor wants to bring Thomas Nommensen, the former deputy head of the German Police Union in Schleswig-Holstein, to court.

A spokesman for the authority announced that the "Lübeck police officer" had been charged at the end of August for having passed on information to the police reporter of a regional newspaper in ten cases "in a criminal manner."

It is known that the regional newspaper is the "Kieler Nachrichten".

Nommensen is said to have committed the acts between May 2018 and July 2019.

According to SPIEGEL information, the investigators base the allegations mainly on WhatsApp chats.

Last year, Nommensen's cell phone was seized as part of a raid.

Forensic scientists managed to reconstruct a lot of deleted data.

Von Nommensen's attorney said they would read the charges carefully before commenting on them.

You take note of the process "with incomprehension".

Interior Minister falls

The case is politically explosive.

In May, the former Interior Minister Hans-Joachim Grote (CDU) fell through his contacts with Nommensen and the journalist.

Prime Minister Daniel Günther (CDU) said that he lacked the confidence to continue working together.

Nommensen and the journalist are known to be sharp critics of the police leadership in the country.

In the so-called rocker affair, for which an investigative committee has been running in the state parliament for a long time, both campaigned for two allegedly bullied investigators - and apparently saw Grote as an ally.

This is suggested by chats that were already known in the spring.

In the indictment, the investigators accuse Nommensen of wanting to damage the image of the police leadership and the judiciary, which he despises, by breaking secrets.

In addition, through his close contacts with the "Kieler Nachrichten", he was able to outdo the larger rival union GdP in the media.

Nommensen was often quoted in the newspaper.

Nommensen has been suspended from duty because of the trial.

Before that he worked as a police superintendent at the Lübeck District Criminal Inspectorate.

As a representative of the union, he also sat on the main staff council of the state police.

According to the prosecutor, the indicted cases suggest that Nommensen was breaching information from each of his professional functions.

Allegations of the public prosecutor's office

• In July 2018, three police inspector candidates were found drunk with derailments.

  As a member of the DPolG, one of the trio received legal protection from his union, which therefore learned details from the proceedings.

  When the case was indicted in April 2019, according to the Kiel investigators, Nommensen passed the indictment on to the journalist.

  Because the newspaper reported on it, the police officers suffered mentally.

  Nommensen was all about putting the management of the police school in a bad light.

• In September 2018, a former resident of the Boostedt refugee shelter attacked his ex-girlfriend who was still living there with a knife.

  According to the indictment, Nommensen provided internal information about the perpetrators and motives to the journalist, who criticized in his reports that the politicians wanted to keep the incident quiet.

  The investigators are convinced that Nommensen was concerned that those responsible could be publicly accused of wrongdoing.

• In May 2019, Nommensen learned from the main staff council that a police commissioner candidate should be dismissed from service on suspicion of right-wing extremism.

  Nommensen promptly informed the journalist about this, including the subsequent approval of the staff council.

  His motive here too was to harm the police leadership as a whole.

Crude expressions in chat

The prosecution lists numerous chats that show that Nommensen used rude words about his employer to the journalist.

Nommensen wrote about the spokeswoman for a public prosecutor's office that he was planning to "pee on her leg".

At one point it says: "LKA ??? I think I shit."

According to the chat, he calls the leadership of the state police "bastards", the "shop" "is increasingly puking him".

The Lübeck Regional Court has to decide whether there will be a trial.

In Lübeck, the Kiel investigators charged the matter because Nommensen lives there and the crime is said to have occurred there.

The prosecutor said they were still investigating the complex.

There are a total of 46 more cases in which indiscretions are suspected.

If convicted, Nommensen face up to five years in prison.

The policeman had recently tried unsuccessfully to reverse his suspension.

This was appropriate, decided the Schleswig Higher Administrative Court.

It is "mostly likely" that Nommensen will lose his official status and be removed from service because of two cases of indiscretions alone.

He resigned as a union vice-president at the end of 2019.

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