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Bellevue Palace, official residence of the Federal President
Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa
It is not known whether Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has ever helped a criminal to be released from prison earlier.
The Office of the Federal President does not provide any information on this.
But that should change now.
The non-profit association Open Knowledge Foundation Germany has therefore filed a lawsuit against Bellevue with the Berlin administrative court, reports »Tagesschau.de«.
The activists are committed to ensuring that as much government information as possible becomes publicly accessible.
With the lawsuit, you want to ensure that the decisions of the Federal President on requests for clemency from the years 2004 to 2021 become known.
According to Article 60 of the Basic Law, the Federal President has the right to pardon convicted criminals who have been convicted by federal jurisdiction.
These include, but are not limited to, members or supporters of terrorist organizations, spies, traitors or war criminals.
The report says that in previous correspondence, the President's lawyers argued that there was no right to information about pardons. Because the head of state exercises his right of pardon as a constitutional body and not as an administrative authority, which is fundamentally entitled to freedom of information. The Basic Law itself assigns this right to the Federal President, which means that he has been given “a special kind of shaping power”. The right of pardon is not subject to any normative commitment, and there is also no judicial control.
One of the most well-known cases of trying to be pardoned was in 2007 the former RAF terrorist Christian Klar.
He had been sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the murder of employer president Hanns-Martin Schleyer, federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and banker Jürgen Ponto and had been in prison since the end of 1982.
The then Federal President Horst Koehler rejected his request for clemency.
However, Klar was released at the end of 2008.
The Higher Regional Court (OLG) in Stuttgart decided that Klar must be released on probation on January 3, 2009 after his minimum term of imprisonment expired.
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