Deutsche Welle, 7 Aug 2013
Bavarian judges ordered the immediate release of Gustl Mollath from an institution for the criminally insane, pending a retrial of his case. His incarceration for seven years has been dubbed a legal scandal.
Bavarian judges ordered the immediate release of Gustl Mollath from an institution for the criminally insane, pending a retrial of his case. His incarceration for seven years has been dubbed a legal scandal.
Gustl
Ferdinand Mollath, 57, spent the last seven years in a forensic mental
institution, where he had been submitted and held because judges had found him
criminally insane and dangerous to himself and others.
He was
found to have physically attacked his wife, who is now divorced, and slit open
the tires of her lawyers' cars. His action was linked to his accusations that
his wife had been involved in a complex tax-evasion scheme.
The
indictment had stated aggravated assault and wrongful deprivation of personal
liberty against his ex-wife, as well as damage to property.
In 2006,
following several assessments of his mental state, a court found Mollath guilty
of the charges, but deemed him unfit to be held criminally responsible.
The court
submitted him against his will to a closed psychiatric ward for the criminally
insane, stating that his accusations against his ex-wife were an expression of
serious paranoia.
Tax evasion
claims partially true
In 2012, a
review of the 2003 dealings of the Bavarian HypoVereinsbank was made public by
an investigative German TV magazine. The document backed some of Mollath's tax
evasion claims against his wife.
This raised
the question whether Mollath's tax evasion allegations had been wrongly
interpreted as part of a paranoid delusional system, and whether he was
erroneously in forensic psychiatry.
His case
became the subject of a broad public controversy over whether it was
justifiable that he was incarcerated against his will.
Still he
remained in the institution. In July 2013, a court in Regensburg threw out a
plea by Mollath for a resumption of proceedings and a possible release. This
verdict has now been overturned.
The verdict
was applauded also by leading politicians of the Bavarian ruling CSU. The high
profile case of Mollath had turned into an embarrassment in the run up to
September's election for the state parliament, as the CSU Justice Minister
Beate Merk stressed her belief that Mollath had received fair treatment all
along.
rg/slk (dpa, AFP)
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