The testimony under oath was inadmissible. The politician is currently represented in the Bundestag as non-attached.
Dresden (dpa) - The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe has overturned the conviction of former AfD chief Frauke Petry for negligent misstatement and thus acquitted the 44-year-old.
The BGH informed about a corresponding decision of April 14 on Wednesday. The district court of Dresden had sentenced Petry to a fine of 6,000 euros in April 2019. She had been accused of giving false testimony to the state parliament's election review committee in November 2015 and swearing her information. However, the Dresden public prosecutor's office moved away from the accusation of intentional perjury. Petry filed a revision.
According to the BGH, the accused "did not make himself punishable for negligent false divorce because she was excluded from the role of witness as a representative of the AfD group involved in the election examination process". The Saxon Election Examination Act provides for the swearing in of witnesses by the Election Examination Board. But that does not apply if they are involved in the process. "If participants - like the AfD parliamentary group here - could only act through representatives, they would exercise the rights and obligations that apply to those involved," it said. The testimony under oath was therefore inadmissible.
Petry had turned her back on her party after the 2017 federal election and later founded the Blue Party. After the slump in the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia in 2019, Petry announced the dissolution of the Blue Party. The politician herself is currently represented in the Bundestag as non-attached.