Icon: enlarge
Bushido on the witness stand (archive picture from August)
Photo: PAUL ZINKEN / AFP
It is the 14th day of the trial against Arafat Abou-Chaker and three of his brothers.
For the vast majority of days, one person in particular has spoken in room 500 of the Berlin Regional Court: Anis Ferchichi alias Bushido.
The rapper has become a kind of key witness against the Abou Chaker clan.
Armed police are responsible for his safety.
They escort Bushido to the hall every morning and shield him from the Berlin clan boss.
Bushido and Arafat Abou-Chaker had worked together extremely lucratively for many years.
Both have made millions.
But according to Bushido, Abou-Chaker owes his money primarily to him.
Bushido presents his business relationship with Abou-Chaker as a pact with the devil. In September 2017 Bushido finally got fed up and gathered his courage.
That was what he said the previous day of the trial.
Abou-Chaker called him to the office on September 24, 2017 to talk about business in Switzerland.
But Bushido no longer wanted to do business with him.
He told him that too.
Abou-Chaker was puzzled and was silent for a while.
Then he apparently agreed and said: "Okay, but that's not that easy." Bushido was relieved.
From then on, he asked Abou-Chaker once a week whether he had already thought about how the separation could be carried out.
Abou-Chaker put him off.
At some point he should have started to threaten.
Bushido, on the other hand, provoked in his own way.
In early November 2017, Bushido advertised a café by Ashraf Rammo on Instagram.
This is a good place to "relax and smoke a shisha", "has to be seen," he wrote under a photo.
Ashraf Rammo belongs to another Berlin clan.
No problem for Bushido.
"Ashraf Rammo is a very, very pleasant guy," he said in court on Wednesday.
He laughs.
"Today is perhaps a wrong day to talk about it." On Tuesday, members of the Rammo clan were arrested in connection with the art theft in the Green Vault in Dresden.
For his Instagram post he got "a lot of trouble" from Arafat Abou-Chaker.
Abou-Chaker called from Brazil, where he was at the time.
Bushido shouldn't advertise "any café".
"Arafat never mentioned the name Ashraf Rammo." For him, the Rammos were only "these people."
After Abou-Chaker's return there was a meeting with Bushido in November.
Yasser Abou-Chaker, Arafat's brother and co-defendant, was also there.
Bushido learned that his separation intentions were making the rounds.
Yasser Abou-Chaker asked.
"Yes, you're right, I don't want to have anything to do with your brother on business," Bushido told him.
Mohammed, another brother of Arafat Abou-Chaker, got involved.
"That doesn't work," he is supposed to have said: "No matter what happens: There will be no Bushido without Abou-Chaker and no Abou-Chaker without Bushido." Arafat Abou-Chaker himself is said to have held back on that day.
A few days later, the clan chief and the rapper stood in front of Bushido's house.
Bushido summarizes Abou-Chaker's announcement and the following exchange of words.
"If I find out you're doing something behind my back, it won't just explode a bomb, it will explode an atomic bomb."
"Do you want to threaten me?"
"We'll see what happens."
On December 7th, 2017 the next meeting.
Abou-Chaker insulted Bushido as a "bastard" and "son of a bitch" and said: "Your eyes will fall out at how much money you owe me!" One word resulted in another.
Bushido says he realized that Abou-Chaker didn't want the breakup.
"He just didn't want to."
Cell phone stored in the microwave
One day Nasser Abou-Chaker, another brother, tried to change Bushido’s mind.
You could take a break for half a year until calm has returned and things have calmed down.
"No, the matter is fixed for me," said Bushido.
Nasser Abou-Chaker tried further.
People would talk, there were rumors.
"Other clans, other rappers would make fun of them." Bushido stuck to his decision - and Arafat Abou-Chaker wanted money.
A few days later, Abou-Chaker and Bushido met on their shared property in Kleinmachnow, Brandenburg.
Abou-Chaker had a huge wellness area including a swimming pool built in the basement area of the villas without a building permit.
Bushido says he was neither involved in the planning nor has he ever seen bills.
He only paid for it: around 400,000 euros.
Suddenly Abou-Chaker wanted another million euros from him.
"That was the biggest bullshit I've ever heard."
The next meeting in mid or late December.
They met in the office on Puderstrasse.
"Then Arafat locked the door." Bushido wasn't surprised.
At other meetings he had to hand in his cell phone, which was then stored in the microwave.
For safety reasons.
"We lived the bullshit from Mafia films."
"No, that would be a lie"
Bushido
Bushido says he thought they would finally clarify how a separation could be carried out.
But Abou-Chaker made it clear to him that Bushido was a kind of company for him that not only belonged to Anis Ferchichi, but also to him, Abou-Chaker.
“The problem is,” Bushido says to the presiding judge, “I'm not a shop.
I can't give him Bushido. «What Abou-Chaker mean, what of his body belongs to him, he asked him back then.
Half of his tongue?
His right arm, with which he is holding the microphone?
Abou-Chaker replied that Bushido is his property.
Then he unlocked the door again.
The presiding judge asks whether Bushido felt locked in the room.
"No," he says, "that would be a lie."
In January 2018 it may have been different.
According to the indictment, Arafat Abou-Chaker is said to have locked the door again.
Then he is said to have insulted Bushido massively and attacked him with a half-full plastic water bottle and a chair.
The public prosecutor's office evaluates it, among other things, as deprivation of liberty and dangerous bodily harm.
Anis Ferchichi is supposed to speak about that day the next day of the negotiation.
After a three-week break, the process will continue on December 14th.
Icon: The mirror
