Bodo Schiffmann: "lateral thinking" spokesman accused of hate speech

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Bodo Schiffmann (August 2020): Certificates without an examination?

Photo: Markus Scholz / DPA

According to a statement, the public prosecutor's office in Heidelberg has brought charges against a doctor couple who were formerly based in Sinsheim.

According to several media, including SWR and "Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung", these are the "lateral thinking" spokesman Bodo Schiffmann and his wife Mechthild.

The couple is accused by the public prosecutor's office of having issued incorrect medical certificates to exempt them from the obligation to wear masks in the corona pandemic.

The ear, nose and throat doctor is also said to have downplayed the Holocaust and called for "unpeaceful actions" against the government and the judiciary of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The couple had already been charged at the end of January, according to the public prosecutor.

This has only now been publicly announced because the accused should have first taken note of the indictment.

The doctor is now to be tried before the district court of Heidelberg for issuing incorrect health certificates in ten cases and for hate speech in two cases.

His wife is accused of issuing incorrect health certificates in seventeen cases.

Certificate without examination?

Investigations would have shown that between the first half of 2020 and mid-2021, the couple would have provided people from all over Germany who refused the mask requirement with deliberately incorrect certificates.

According to the information, these should prove that the people could not wear a mouth and nose cover for alleged medical reasons.

It is said that people to whom certificates were issued lived up to 700 kilometers away from the doctor's office in Sinsheim.

They were not personally examined.

According to the public prosecutor, the allegation of incitement to hatred stems from Internet videos.

The accused compared doctors who administered corona vaccines with Josef Mengele.

As a concentration camp doctor in the Auschwitz death camp, Mengele shared responsibility for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews under National Socialism.

The accused also compared the corona quarantine measure with imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp, the public prosecutor said.

He called for resistance, those responsible for the corona measures should be “held accountable”.

According to "t-online", Bodo Schiffmann's lawyer said that little would remain of the allegations against his client.

The patients were examined before the certificates were issued.

In a medical assessment, the couple came to the conclusion that these patients should not wear a mask for medical reasons.

Schiffmann is a spokesman for the »lateral thinking« movement, which spreads conspiracy stories and is monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

The doctor distributes his videos on YouTube, for example, where he runs a channel with more than 140,000 subscribers with his practice, the Sinsheim Vertigo Clinic.

The Heidelberg Public Prosecutor's Office announced that the Greater Criminal Chamber of the District Court of Heidelberg now has to decide whether to open the main proceedings.

ptz