ped child. Wolfgang Daschner, 61, who was acting head of the Frankfurt police when 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler was seized in 2002, has described the case as “like a Greek tragedy”.
“Either I violated the rights of the suspect, or I put at risk the life of the victim. In weighing up the options it was clear to me what I had to do, and I would do the same again.”
In an emotionally charged and morally complex case — dubbed the “torture trial” — he is accused of ordering a senior officer to threaten a suspect. Even though the word torture did not figure in the indictment read out yesterday, the implications of the case go well beyond the responsibilities of police interrogators. At stake is the ethical question: how far can the State violate its own principles to protect innocent lives? Jakob, son of a prosperous banking family, was kidnapped by his former tutor, Magnus Gäfgen, 27, who demanded a €1 million (£700,000) ransom. Police tracked Gäfgen as he picked up the cash and arrested him when he did not seem to be returning to his hostage.
For 36 hours, Gäfgen was interrogated about Jakob’s whereabouts but he peppered his statements with lies and evasions. Police were nervous that the imprisoned child would suffocate or freeze in his hideaway. Eventually Herr Daschner, currently suspended, took the decision to threaten force. According to his defence lawyer, Eckart Hild, Herr Daschner sought and received the go-ahead from an unnamed senior official in the Interior Ministry.
In fact the chain of command may go close to the top of the political tree. At the time of the kidnapping Roland Koch, the Prime Minister of Hesse — tipped to be a future German chancellor — publicly expressed understanding for the police action. Gäfgen is now serving a life sentence.
Herr Daschner did not personally utter the threat; that task was passed on to the interrogators. Gäfgen crumpled within 20 minutes of the threat and admitted he had killed the child within hours of the kidnap. He then led police to the body. Herr Daschner — who has won the sympathy of Germany’s tabloid press — could face between six months and five years in jail if found guilty.
The German Constitution, shaped partly in response to the Nazi years, places the highest priority on “human dignity”, which suggests that the ban on torture may be more powerful in legal terms than the need to save a life. Herr Daschner’s defence team has to convince the court that the policeman weighed up both the rights of the victim and the suspected killer and made his decision according to his conscience. The hearings are set to continue until the end of the year.
A tricky one: there should never be any room whatsoever in a legal framework for the use of force or the threat of the use of force…..and yet, one would want senior police officers to use their judgement, as this one did, in particular exceptional cases. So it’s right that the policeman’s been brought to trial, but I hope he gets off – this was surely a responsible decision to exceed his powers.
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