Police kettle | Day X in Leipzig: Innocents surrounded

It was a police kettle the likes of which had rarely been seen before in Germany. On June 3, 2023, exactly 1,324 people were surrounded by police on Heinrich-Schütz-Platz in Leipzig and detained for up to eleven hours . They had protested against the restrictions on freedom of assembly because a demonstration on so-called Day X had been banned due to fears of violence following the Dresden verdict against anti-fascist Lina E. a few days earlier. Isolated outbreaks of violence also gave the police the pretext to encircle the protest on Schütz-Platz and subject those affected to hours of harassment. They had to endure without drinking water or food and relieve themselves in the bushes.

They were subsequently subjected to investigations: for breach of the peace and dangerous bodily harm, resistance to or physical assault on law enforcement officers, insults, and arson. A total of 1,537 proceedings were initiated. Two years later, the allegations have largely been found to be unfounded. 861, or almost two-thirds, of the proceedings have been dropped. This was announced by Saxony's Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU) in response to an inquiry by Left Party MP Jule Nagel. In most cases, "the facts of the case, illegality, or guilt could not be established," it was stated. In some cases, the reported behavior did not constitute a criminal offense. In at least two cases, the proceedings were dropped because the person concerned was still a child. Among those imprisoned were many minors who were denied any contact with their parents.

According to the ministry, a further 445 cases are still being processed by the police or are pending a decision by the public prosecutor's office. Nagel stated that she "assumes that a number of cases will be dropped." In some cases, penal orders with fines have been requested. Charges have been filed with criminal court, lay judges, or juvenile court in only 19 cases, or less than one and a half percent, Nagel said. This makes the record of the public prosecutor's office and the investigative team specially set up within the police "extremely poor from a legal perspective." According to the Leipzig representatives, this confirms the impression of many observers that the police, with a presence of 3,000 officers in the city that day, "acted quite indiscriminately and with disproportionate severity against a large number of innocent people."

"From a legal perspective, the record of the public prosecutor's office and the police investigation team is extremely poor."

Jule Nagel, Left Party MP

One of the most striking examples of this is the "Benni" case. A 25-year-old activist using this pseudonym was charged with attempted murder and 18 counts of attempted bodily harm for allegedly throwing two incendiary devices at police officers while masked and wearing dark clothing. He had been in pre-trial detention for six months since January 2024. Six months later, however, the arrest warrant was lifted by the regional court because it did not consider there to be strong suspicion of guilt. In August 2024, the court then dismissed most of the charges entirely because "Benni" could not be clearly identified as the person who had thrown the incendiary devices. An appeal by the public prosecutor's office was rejected by the higher regional court. The only remaining charge now is the charge of breach of the peace , which is to be heard at the district court.

With regard to the numerous discontinued proceedings, Nagel also reiterated that, as a result of this measure, most of those surrounded are now listed as left-wing extremists by the domestic intelligence agencies. The portal "Ask den Staat" (Ask the State) had published in October that the data of all 1,322 criminally responsible individuals had been passed on by the Saxon police and stored in the Joint Intelligence Information System (NADIS) of the German secret services. Their data is now recorded there for the next five years. Data protection advocates and lawyers had sharply criticized the comprehensive storage practices in connection with the Leipzig police cordon. Nagel now declared, in light of the meager results of the investigation, that there was no reason for such "criminalization": "I therefore expect the data to be deleted immediately."