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Bushido (with defense attorney Tzschoppe): joint plaintiff and most important witness in the trial against Arafat Abou-Chaker
Photo:
picture alliance / dpa
That Arafat Abou-Chaker is the devil in Bushido's eyes, the rapper has already stated before the Berlin Regional Court over dozen days of negotiations.
Their collaboration was a kind of forced marriage.
Abou-Chaker earned millions from him and called himself a manager without doing the right thing.
Abou-Chaker regards him as his property, Bushido says again this Monday in court: “He sees it this way: He is Bushido.
All of this belongs to him.
He still thinks that today. "
The basis of the cooperation was intimidation, as Anis Ferchichi alias Bushido explains. The fact that there was a management contract between them did not play a role at all in practice.
The defense sees it differently.
On this day, the dispute between Bushido's lawyer and Abou-Chaker's lawyer escalates.
There are two versions of the management contract, both dated January 30, 2007. In one version Abou-Chaker receives 30 percent of Bushido's income, in another version 50 percent.
There is also a September 2007 waiver agreement that invalidates either version.
Secondary prosecution and defense disagree as to which of the two should be overturned.
Bushido says he only signed the 30 percent variant, only this version of the contract is genuine.
The signature on the 50 percent version did not come from him.
The defense doesn't believe him.
She considers Bushido's signature under the 50 percent contract to be just as authentic as his signature under the annulment agreement.
From the point of view of the defense, these documents also refute Bushido's claim that Abou-Chaker did not care about contracts because he simply took what he wanted.
"Forgery"
From the defense's point of view, the documents also contradict Bushido's account that Abou-Chaker treated him as a serf.
"With serfs or slaves, however, you hardly ever conclude annulment agreements and new contracts," the defense said.
Rather, the documents showed that "Mr. Abou-Chaker definitely gives something to contracts and attaches importance to them."
Defense attorney Hansgeorg Birkhoff had applied on Wednesday to introduce the so-called hand file of the former lawyer of Abou-Chaker and Bushido into the main hearing.
That lawyer is said to have drawn up both versions of the management contract and the termination agreement.
The court has not yet decided on this.
Instead, Bushido's lawyer, Steffen J. Tzschoppe, first commented on the application that day.
And what Tzschoppe presents brings Abou-Chaker's lawyers angry.
Tzschoppe doubts the completeness of the former attorney's file.
“There is no letter to Anis Ferchichi, not a single one.
There are no invoices or other documents that you would expect to find in a legal handbook. «Above all, the 30 percent version of the management contract is missing.
"Even defensive behavior knows the limits of permissibility," says Tzschoppe.
"And yes, I continue to claim that the allegedly complete extract from the attorney's hand file is a forgery."
Obviously backdated?
The public prosecutor's office jumps to the co-prosecutor's representative.
She also says that the lawyer’s file at the time raises questions and is "obviously not complete."
And the fact that the 50 percent version of the management contract has the same date as the 30 percent version is "obviously dubious".
Because one version has obviously been backdated.
Attorney Toralf Nöding, who is defending a brother of Arafat Abou-Chaker, is furious that Bushido's attorney's statement is "stylistically subterranean" and "highly indecent", and that "mud is thrown for pages".
After an interruption, Arafat Abou-Chaker's defense attorney Hansgeorg Birkhoff even accuses Bushido's lawyer of having committed a criminal offense with his statement in the ongoing main hearing and of being guilty of defamation.
The current lawyer for Abou-Chaker understands the allegations of the secondary prosecution as an attack on himself. The statement contains a "blatant attack on my personal integrity," says Birkhoff.
Tzschoppe's lecture is suitable "to defame me," he says.
It is assumed that he has made something disappear from a file.
"That still has consequences," says Birkhoff.
"But now you are threatening me," Tzschoppe observes.
Birkhoff: "Yes, I do."
Birkhoff asks the court to record passages from Tzschoppe's statement.
The public prosecutor's office considers this unnecessary "because there is no criminal offense at all".
The co-plaintiff did not submit who might have manipulated the file, only that it was apparently incomplete.
The court solves it Solomonic.
Due to the written declaration of the secondary prosecution, the passage was entered as an annex in the protocol and no longer needs to be recorded separately.
"I wanted to apologize to my wife first"
On this day of the trial, the court asked Bushido to come to the witness table.
Then the judge goes through the protocols of his interrogations with the police.
As early as Wednesday it was about November 2018. At that time Bushido is said to have learned that his wife and children were supposed to be attacked with acid and kidnapped.
These allegations against Abou-Chaker have not been substantiated and are not part of the indictment.
The judge now says to the witness Bushido: "I still haven't understood why you didn't go straight to the police at that time."
It was an "emotional decision," says the rapper.
"That my wife and children are threatened by Arafat Abou-Chaker shocked me incredibly." He was shocked and desperate.
"I suddenly realized that my family was in danger." His wife and children were initially more important to him than the authorities.
"I wanted to apologize to my wife first, that was the first impulse," he says.
Only in January 2019 did Bushido testify against Abou-Chaker.
Only then did he tell the investigating authorities what should have happened a year earlier.
In January 2018, Abou-Chaker is said to have locked him in an office, threatened and insulted him and attacked him with a bottle and a chair.
He had previously "kept silent out of fear and honor," Bushido said last week.
He describes Abou-Chaker as a "sleeping volcano" that can erupt at any time.
The authorities seem to see it similarly, Bushido and his family are still under police protection.
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