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Abu Walaa in the courtroom in Celle
Photo: Ronny Hartmann / Getty Images
Abu Walaa keeps shaking his head as the presiding judge pronounces the verdict after almost three and a half years of trial and 246 days.
Shortly before, Abu Walaa's defense had spoken of witnesses who had told "fairy tales" and "lies" and renewed the demand that their clients be acquitted.
Now, by repeatedly shaking his head in the dock of the high-security room of the Higher Regional Court in Celle, the Islamist himself makes clear what he thinks of the State Security Senate's verdict.
Not much.
The Senate is convinced that Abu Walaa was not just a member of the terrorist organization "Islamic State" (IS), but "Representative of IS in Germany" and thus the highest representative of the terrorist organization in the Federal Republic.
According to the court, Abu Walaa, whose real name is Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., is 37 years old and a native of Iraq, helped young men from Germany to get into IS territory in Syria and Iraq.
In doing so, he had a direct influence on the decisions of the IS leadership and also on the function of those who had left within the terrorist organization.
According to the judgment, he gave one of his followers, the Saxon convert Martin L., 2000 euros for a trip to Syria in 2014, put him in contact with a smuggler and helped L. get a leading position in the IS secret service.
From spring 2014 to September 2016, Abu Walaa was the imam and preacher of the mosque of the now banned association “Deutschsprachiger Islamkreis Hildesheim”, a center of the Islamist-jihadist scene in Germany.
Within the scene, he was considered a "leading authority with great charisma and great appeal," says the judge.
Together with the three co-defendants - Mahmoud O., Hasan C. and Boban S. - he recruited young men for IS, mainly from the Ruhr area and the Hildesheim area.
Abu Walaa encouraged them to take part in the IS fight or to engage in terrorist organizations in Germany, for example through attacks.
Abu Walaa is "a cautious man," the judge quoted from a witness.
In his video appearances on the Internet he was mysterious, wore a black robe and black turban and could only be seen from behind.
He is said to have only made known his true intentions in small groups or in private.
In court, the "preacher without a face" can hide his face behind a surgical mask because of the corona pandemic.
He has a full beard and bald head.
He was silent about the allegations during the trial.
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Presiding judge Frank Rosenow
Photo: JULIAN STRATENSCHULTE / AFP
The Senate based its judgment essentially on the information provided by the legendary undercover agent Murat Cem alias VP01, who had spied on the Salafist hate preacher cell around Abu Walaa on behalf of the State Criminal Police Office of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Attorney General.
SPIEGEL reporters revealed that Cems had been a police informant for almost 20 years in a cover story and a book ("Undercover") in the spring.
Cem's information was supplemented by that of the witness Anil O., a former Islamist.
He said that Abu Walaa was the "number 1" of IS in Germany.
O. traveled with his wife and child to IS in Syria in August 2015.
Six months later, they fled to Turkey and finally returned to Germany in 2016.
Today Anil O. cooperates with the security authorities and tells the investigators everything they want to know.
Especially about Abu Walaa.
His willingness to provide information paid off.
In a separate trial he was sentenced to two years imprisonment for membership in a terrorist organization, suspended on probation.
For defense, Anil O. is primarily characterized by his strategic relationship with truth.
To them he is a liar and a con man.
On this day, the Senate also attested Anil O. “a pronounced self-confidence”.
He is "exceptionally intelligent and eloquent."
Nevertheless, the judges do not doubt the credibility of his statements.
Anil O. was questioned intensively during the process for twenty days of negotiations.
He described complex events with almost no contradictions.
The court also recognized "striking similarities" with the information provided by the undercover agent Cem.
The defense 's assumption that "two notorious liars have invented identical stories of lies" is "simply absurd," says the judge.
Especially since the statements of two other witnesses matched their statements "without significant contradictions".
V-Mann Murat Cem was initially assigned to Anil O. in 2015.
Before Anil O. made his career as a key witness against extremists, he was considered a top threat by the authorities.
Months later, Cem also met Anis Amri, the later assassin from Berlin's Breitscheidplatz, and repeatedly warned his undercover agents about the Tunisian.
But the officials were more interested in Abu Walaa.
In the spring of 2019, Murat Cem spoke to SPIEGEL for hundreds of hours - without the knowledge of the police.
He also testified before committees of inquiry into the Berlin attack, only in the process before the higher regional court in Celle he was not allowed to appear as a witness.
The North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior did not give him permission to testify.
Neither the court nor the defense were able to hear either of the two main witnesses for the prosecution.
They had to be content with questioning his undercover agents and the head of the investigation committee.
On Wednesday, Judge Rosenow named "a large number" of other indications that speak for Abu Walaa's membership in IS.
For example, sound recordings that were found on his cell phone.
In it, Abu Walaa justified the murder of a Jordanian fighter pilot who was burned alive by IS.
Or his voice message »The Renegade Spy«, which he distributed in 2016 via the Telegram intelligence service.
Shortly before, Abu Walaa's rooms had been searched.
The preacher suspected who he owed this and warned his people about the "spy" Murat Cem.
"May God Almighty destroy this apostate," the judge quotes.
The court finally sentenced Abu Walaa to a total imprisonment of ten and a half years for membership in a terrorist organization abroad and, in some cases, for unity with aiding and abetting in the preparation of a serious state-endangering act of violence and terrorist financing.
In favor of Abu Walaa, the court assesses that he does not have a criminal record, that he had to endure long pre-trial detention under the difficult conditions of a terrorism trial and that the trial lasted exceptionally long.
To its disadvantage, the Senate assesses, among other things, "that during the period of the crime, IS was the world's most dangerous and powerful terrorist organization."
The three co-defendants - Mahmoud O., Hasan C. and Boban S. - are sentenced to total imprisonment of four, six and a half and eight years for supporting a terrorist organization.
Abu Walaa, Boban S. and Hasan C., in the opinion of the court, acted on their mainly young followers in different places, but at the same time and with the same aim.
Unlike the Federal Prosecutor's Office, the Senate recognized a "network of relationships", but not a network with fixed structures and a clear division of roles.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
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