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Patrick Losensky, also known as Fler, on trial in Berlin
Photo: Paul Zinken / dpa
It should just be a driver's license check.
But Patrick Losensky, better known as rapper Fler, already seems annoyed on the afternoon of September 22, 2019 when he only notices that a police car is following him.
At least that is how the policeman remembers, who shortly after gets to feel the rapper's anger.
Fler does not wait to be stopped by the police, but stops his Mercedes on his own initiative, opens the window and curses at the police officer in the passenger seat of the police car who is parked next to his car.
The official told the Berlin-Tiergarten district court that he had already requested reinforcements over the radio.
Then he and his colleague got out.
Fler and his girlfriend also left their car.
The policeman says he asked Fler to show his driver's license and vehicle registration document.
But Fler didn't do anything like that, but kept cursing.
"Tail", "little rag", "dwarf", "piece of shit", "fanboy" - a rapper's repertoire of insults.
"He insulted me completely," says the policeman.
Fler's girlfriend filmed the whole thing on her cell phone.
The video landed on the internet and went viral.
It is now used as evidence by the court.
The judges have the video played in the hall on that day.
Five patrol cars
The policeman is six years younger than the 38-year-old Fler and is of a much smaller figure.
He felt threatened by Fler's "aggressive demeanor," he says.
"I saw the danger of physical resistance." He had his colleague handcuff the rapper.
The video shows: Fler does not resist the bondage.
On the contrary.
He willingly puts his hands behind his back, holds them out to the officer - and continues scolding, accusing the policeman of "harassment".
The insulted policeman tries to avoid the rapper.
Fler, now tied up, runs after him.
A police siren can be heard after a few minutes.
The reinforcement is coming.
First another police car, then more and more emergency services.
In the end it should have been five police cars.
The operation should have lasted about three quarters of an hour.
The fetter was finally removed again.
He was allowed to drive away in the passenger seat of his car and with his girlfriend at the wheel.
Before that, the policeman had found Fler's driver's license in the car, it was no longer valid.
According to the public prosecutor, Fler was guilty of driving without a license and of insulting himself.
There are also other allegations.
He is also said to have insulted the rapper Bushido, bourgeois Anis Ferchichi, and his wife Anna-Maria.
Telephone conversation with Mesut Özil
Fler is also said to have posted a link on social media that led to parts of the files from the proceedings against the Berlin clan chief Arafat Abou-Chaker and three of his brothers.
Bushido is a joint plaintiff and the most important witness in the proceedings before the regional court.
The link led, among other things, to the minutes of a witness hearing from Bushido and to the transcription of a monitored telephone conversation between Bushido's wife and her ex-partner, the footballer Mesut Özil.
The trial against Fler had already started in November and the main hearing had to be broken off because the defendant was ill.
Now the process starts all over again.
And already on the first day of the negotiation it is clear that the matter may not be as clear as it appears at first glance.
Fler himself makes use of his right to remain silent in court.
Instead, defense attorney Stefan König made an opening statement immediately after the indictment was read out.
König points out that the Federal Constitutional Court has ruled several times that the context should always be considered when evaluating statements as insulting.
And that context also includes the background of the person who speaks.
When lawyers have beef
His client belongs to the gangsta rap scene.
"Particularly rough and rowdy statements" are common there.
Gangsta rappers regularly delivered so-called beefs, that is, crude verbal exchanges of blows including "insults below the belt".
König says Bushido and his wife also belonged to this scene.
Against this background, the statements of his client should be assessed.
The language used by lawyers should not be used as a yardstick.
Defense and the public prosecutor's office immediately illustrate what a beef sounds like in this professional group.
The public prosecutor interrupts König several times.
The defense attorney is making a kind of early pleading, and the code of criminal procedure does not provide for something like that, she is angry.
King forbids the interruption.
"An impropriety!" He says, pointing out that not everything that is not in the code of criminal procedure is inadmissible in court.
Even the presiding judge sees no reason to stop König.
The defense attorney continues.
The allegations against his client were largely "pulled by the hair".
It is mainly about "nicknesses" that are not worth negotiating, especially in times of pandemic.
"It's amazing what the prosecution has scraped up here," he grumbles.
The prosecution should have been limited to serious matters "in these times".
The defense suspects that she did not do so in a completely different process.
The process against the Abou Chaker clan lies like a shadow over the proceedings against Fler.
König accuses the public prosecutor of resenting his client for not making himself available to the investigative authorities - unlike Bushido - as a kind of key witness against the clan.
"That's why he is covered with all these accusations."
A lawyer specializing in traffic law speaks as the last witness that day.
Fler had already contacted him in July 2019.
The lawyer says Fler told him he received a letter from the driver's license office in mid-June.
He was told that he had his license back and that he could pick up his new driver's license at the end of June.
The court reads the letter.
Fler asked the lawyer if he was allowed to drive again, even if he hadn't picked up the driver's license yet.
"According to my legal opinion, he was allowed to drive," says the lawyer.
That's what he said to Fler too.
"I can testify that he at least thought he was in possession of a driver's license."
That, probably the view of the defense, should explain why Fler was so angry about the police check in September.
He still hadn't picked up his new driver's license.
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