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Defendant Arafat Abou-Chaker (archive picture from 11.11.2020 in Berlin): Three of his brothers are sitting with him in the dock
Photo: Olaf Wagner / imago images / Olaf Wagner
Anna-Maria Ferchichi sits on the front edge of the chair.
She propped her forearms on the table, and bent her upper body and head far forward.
Bushido's wife is impatient.
She usually returns the defense questions before they are even formulated.
"Can I perhaps finish my question?" Asks Arafat Abou-Chaker's attorney more than once.
He rarely can.
The 40-year-old is an impulsive, spirited woman.
She feels very similar to Arafat Abou-Chaker.
The 45-year-old also finds it difficult to contain himself this Wednesday in Hall 500 of the Berlin Regional Court.
And so there is a little dialogue between the witness and the accused, who is actually silent.
"Why don't you express yourself?"
It's about Sary H., a friend of Anna-Maria and Anis Ferchichi, as Bushido's real name is.
The friend had recently testified as a witness in the process.
Anna-Maria Ferchichi says that Arafat Abou-Chaker contacted the friend's father in 2018 so that Sary H. would not testify against him.
The chief prosecutor asks how she knew about it.
Sary H. told her about it, says Anna-Maria Ferchichi.
Abou-Chaker laughs mockingly - and forgets to be silent.
"Why didn't you record it?" He calls.
Abou-Chaker's inclination to record calls on his cell phone is now well known.
And Anna-Maria Ferchichi also reports on having recorded a conversation before.
When Abou-Chaker calls out, she reacts without hesitation.
"Why don't you express yourself?" She counters.
"Still coming," says Abou-Chaker.
"Then do it," she adds.
The presiding judge ends the interlude.
The client is still silent
Outside of the hall, Abou-Chaker repeatedly indicates that he would like to speak out on a day of negotiation.
Whether his defenders think this is a good idea is questionable.
Her client is still silent as best he can.
Arafat Abou-Chaker has had to answer in court since August 2020 for deprivation of liberty, attempted severe predatory extortion, coercion, dangerous bodily harm and insult.
Three of his brothers are in the dock with him.
According to the indictment, her victim is the rapper Bushido.
It is the last day of his wife's testimony.
Anna-Maria Ferchichi reports again how much it burdened Bushido that Arafat Abou-Chaker did not accept the business separation.
She repeats that her husband has repeatedly tried to come to an agreement with Abou-Chaker since autumn 2017.
"He thought - a bit stupid - really, they'll agree," she says, "but Arafat just didn't want to part."
She says again that she sent Bushido out of the country in January 2018 after Arafat Abou-Chaker is said to have locked him up, yelled at him and attacked him with a chair and plastic bottle.
And that she finally went to the police without Bushido's knowledge.
The defense tries again and again to ask for details and to work out contradictions.
But Anna-Maria Ferchichi is difficult to grasp.
Depending on your perspective, she is not an easy or a good witness.
It seems as if she just started talking and told what happened to her at the moment.
For example, that she once offered her ex-boyfriend, the former national soccer player Mesut Özil, her villa in Kleinmachnow - in the direct vicinity of Abou-Chaker - for sale.
Dry mouth, a thousand thoughts
In her testimony in court, Anna-Maria Ferchichi hardly differentiates between actual memories and thoughts that she has today about events from the past.
She repeats that she was "totally shocked" when she heard from Sary H. of alleged plans to attack her family by Abou-Chaker.
The judge wants to know more about your reaction at the time.
She tells how her body "always" reacts in such situations: dry mouth, tremors, "a thousand thoughts".
She even brushes aside apparent contradictions in her statements with no worries.
So far, she had presented it in court that Bushido's separation from Abou-Chaker at the end of 2017 welded her and her husband together.
The witness Sary H. recently spoke in court that Anna-Maria Ferchichi wanted to part ways with Bushido in 2018.
The presiding judge picks up on the witness.
Did she intend to break up?
"Yes, often," she says.
Not, as Sary H. claimed, in January 2018, but in the summer of that year.
She last thought about separating in 2020, she says.
The Ferchichis seem to be leading a turbulent marriage.
"Of course we're pulling in the same direction," says Anna-Maria Ferchichi, "but we still have insane problems." Her husband tends to work things out on his own.
Sometimes he is too distant from her.
"I get upset about my husband regularly," she says.
"I tell him to move out about twice a year."
Anna-Maria Ferchichi testified in court on a total of five days.
On this day the presiding judge ends her questioning.
"You have been dismissed with thanks," he says: "You have it behind you." Unless, he says, further questions arise at some point.
The process has so far been scheduled until the end of June.
