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Bushido on the witness stand (archive picture from August)
Photo: PAUL ZINKEN / AFP
“How are you?” The presiding judge looks at the rapper.
Bushido looks a bit surprised.
"You looked a little tense last time," says Judge Martin Mrosk.
"Yes, no," says Bushido, "I'm fine."
For weeks, the 38th Large Criminal Chamber at the Berlin Regional Court has been hearing Anis Ferchichi alias Bushido as a witness.
It's about Bushido's business relationship with Arafat Abou-Chaker.
The Berlin clan chief is the main accused and the rapper is the most important witness in the process.
Abou-Chaker is charged with attempted blackmail, deprivation of liberty and dangerous bodily harm, among other things.
After an almost three-week break in negotiations, the process continued this week.
Forced marriage with the devil
Bushido has already spoken extensively in court about his ambivalent relationship with Abou-Chaker.
Their partnership lasted almost 15 years.
It was not consensual if what Bushido says is correct.
He portrays their relationship as a kind of forced marriage - and Abou-Chaker as the devil.
On Monday, at the request of Arafat Abou-Chaker's defense, the court had a few seconds auditioned from an interview with a radio station.
The contribution is from September 2015. Bushido's voice can be heard.
He's talking about Abou-Chaker.
He calls the clan "the gang" and "my family".
And he says that their relationship is "not based on fear or oppression" but on "love and trust".
Defense attorney Martin Rubbert asks if what he's saying is true.
"No," says Bushido.
“Was that wrong?” Asks Rubbert.
"Yes." "You lied?" He asks again.
"Yes," says Bushido.
It is the question that this process is all about.
Is Bushido lying?
Is he telling the truth?
How credible are his statements in court?
"What's that nonsense?"
For example his statement on January 18, 2018. It is the day on which Arafat Abou-Chaker was charged with deprivation of liberty and dangerous physical harm.
On Monday and this Wednesday, Bushido tells what happened then.
Abou-Chaker ordered him to the office.
Bushido was happy because he thought that Abou-Chaker would finally tell him how their business separation should be carried out.
Abou-Chaker had been putting him off again and again for months.
Bushido finally broke up and no longer wanted to be exploited by the clan boss.
That's how he puts it. "I thought we'd come a step further."
Arafat Abou-Chaker was not waiting for him in the office alone, but with three brothers.
One brother left the office, Bushido, Arafat, Nasser and Yasser Abou-Chaker stayed behind.
All three brothers are in the dock.
Arafat Abou-Chaker locked the door without a word and put the key in his trouser pocket.
Then Yasser Abou-Chaker made him a “complete announcement”: “You won't get out of here alive until you've told us the truth.” Bushido says he didn't understand what it was about.
"What's that nonsense?" He asked.
"Then Arafat broke the string completely." He yelled around, insulting him as a "liar", "cheat", "dog", "son of a bitch" and "bastard".
Access to the Bushido Villa
Photo: Paul Zinken / dpa
Abou-Chaker raved.
He accused Bushido of spending too much time with a mutual friend.
He knows that the friend often visits him at home.
“I shouldn't think any people can protect me from him.
There is no one who can protect me. ”Then Abou-Chaker forbade him to move into his house in Kleinmachnow.
Bushido and Abou-Chaker have a common property there.
They wanted to live there villa after villa.
"I ran tears."
Abou-Chaker demanded that Bushido sell him his part.
He would deduct the sum from the millions of euros that Bushido supposedly still owes him.
"Are you serious?" Asked Bushido.
Abou-Chaker exploded and continued to scream.
Then he suddenly became very calm and threatened: “I'm going to fuck your father.
Then I'll fuck your mother.
Then I'll fuck your wife.
Then I'll fuck your children.
And when I'm done with it, I'll fuck you. "
Bushido repeatedly emphasizes how much that hit him.
“It offended and insulted and hurt me so much that tears came to me.
That was one of the worst things he could say. ”His mother and father were already dead by then. For Bushido, Abou-Chaker's words were the ultimate insult.
"I ran tears."
Arafat Abou-Chaker told him: “I shouldn't think that I can just get out of it.” Either he accepts the price that Abou-Chaker will give him at some point, “or I would give him money for the rest of my life pay whether I want to or not. "
Abou-Chaker was getting angrier.
He took out a plastic water bottle that was on the table - "and then he hit me in the face with the half-full water bottle".
"Did it hurt?" Asks the judge.
“It was uncomfortable.
It was very uncomfortable. ”Bushido hesitates.
It is difficult for him to talk about it.
"For three years people have been making fun of me for being hit with a water bottle."
Abou-Chaker called the friend, with whom Bushido had spent too much time in his opinion, over the phone in the office.
Together they would have waited for his arrival.
"Didn't you just want to run away?" Asks the judge.
"No, not a chance," says Bushido.
"This is my dog"
Abou-Chaker made a clear announcement to their mutual acquaintance, Veysel K.
"I just want to tell you one thing: this is my dog, only I go for a walk with him." The dog was Bushido.
The friend, however, was not impressed.
They would have yelled at each other.
Finally, Veysel asked K. Bushido to leave the office with him.
But Bushido stayed seated.
"I was just paralyzed," he says.
"I just sat there."
The friend disappeared, Abou-Chaker continued to yell at Bushido.
"Suddenly, quite spontaneously, Arafat grabbed a chair and threw it at me." The chair hit him on his left side.
"Were you in pain?" Asks the judge.
"I don't know," says Bushido, "I don't know."
"Has a bruise developed?"
"I do not know."
Bushido looks tired.
He goes on talking, but not quite as bubbly as usual.
"Arafat was mad as hell," he says.
In parting, Abou-Chaker said: “You wait like a dog until I tell you what price you will pay.
Otherwise you will pay for the rest of your life. ”After about four hours he was able to drive home.
"He wiped the floor with me like a mop," says Bushido.
Since that day he has been in psychological treatment.
"I've been going to a psychologist for three years."
Two days later, this Wednesday, he said in court: "The event of January 18 traumatized me very, very much." Again he looked for words.
Abou-Chaker had humiliated him deeply.
"It broke through the middle like a toothpick," he says.
"I felt like dirt."
Bushido and his wife at their wedding celebration in 2012: "She just made an announcement."
Photo: Jens Kalaene / picture alliance / dpa
His wife, however, decided to act that evening.
That night she threatened Arafat Abou-Chaker to put him and his brothers in jail.
She sent her husband on vacation.
Bushido first flew to Kenya, then to Bangkok.
»My wife said:› You have to get out of here. ‹«
"I was very, very excited"
After his return, she had organized a meeting with Abou-Chaker for the beginning of February in an Italian restaurant.
The police had also informed them.
Officials from the State Criminal Police Office watched the meeting from a gas station across the street.
That's what Bushido says.
"I was very, very excited," says Bushido.
His wife was rather angry.
"She's not afraid of Arafat," he says.
She confronted Abou-Chaker and asked him what he thought of treating her husband like that.
"She just made an announcement."
Bushido himself wants to have sat in silence.
“I didn't say anything.” His thought was that he had to get Arafat Abou-Chaker to agree to the end of the collaboration.
"If not, then I won't get out of there, then my family won't get out of it."
When his wife left the restaurant to smoke, Abou-Chaker asked him why his wife said he hit him.
"I didn't hit you," Abou-Chaker said.
"No, you didn't hit me," Bushido replied.
Bushido mentions this because there is a recording of this conversation.
Abou-Chaker apparently used to record conversations on his cell phone.
The recordings ended up with the police.
Bushido knows that the recording now sounds as if the attacks with the bottle and the chair never happened.
Unlike his wife, he did not dare to defend himself against Abou-Chaker.
Abou-Chaker knew that.
"He knew about its effect." And he took advantage of that.
He would have agreed with him in everything back then, says Bushido.
“I would also have said the world is flat or Corona is a lie.
I would have said everything. "
Abou-Chaker's defense attorney asked if he would agree to play the recording in court.
Bushido asks for time to think about it.
He wants to think about it at home.
The process is scheduled to continue on January 6, 2021.
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