Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

250
years were less often sentenced to probation than similar non-terrorist
cases. 101
The introduction of new criminal codes were also not always
necessary. While Paragraph 129a StGB was often used after its
introduction, Para 88a StGB was only used five times, four of them in
connection with other codes, but only once solely. Para 130a StGB was
never used. 1 02
Court procedure codes that sought to shorten court cases did have
the desired effect. While the longest allowable interruption of main
court proceedings went from ten to thirty days, the actual number of
court days declined from thirteen to ten at the state level, and from
thirty to twenty-two at the higher state court level.103
Of the 279 cases, 67% were sentenced to imprisonment, 11% to a fine,
10% to a juvenile sentence, and 11% acquitted.104 This indicates, as
stated, that the legislation in general is fine tuned to the needs of
the country in counterterrorism.
Since then, however, the effectiveness of Para 129a stGB is perhaps
questionable. Between 1980 and 1987 2131 cases of 129a were
investigated, of which five percent came to court. Of this 5%,
thirty resulted in successful convictions. That is a 1.4% success rate
from the 2131 cases.105
129a is, nonetheless, deemed useful because of its ability to enable
other activities such as control points, building searches, restrictions
of defence lawyers' rights, and telephone tapping. This is what places
terrorism into a special category. One result is that many things which
only
are possibly not terrorism receive the terrorism label, such as a
womens f rights group that organised an archive on gene technology .
Likewise a
twenty-three year old female doctor's assistant became a
'terrorist' for spraying 'war on the palaces! on a subway wall, and was
sentenced to one year imprisonment for supporting a terrorist groUp.l06
Para 129a StGB allows the articles to be used in perhaps unusual
circumstances. While it was normal to use Par 88a StGB against
publications, as when it was used against early RAF publications like
the Ueber den bewaffneten Kampf in Westeuropa in October 1971, or
against Baumann's autobiography in 1975, it was rescinded in 1981. This
necessitated the use of Para 129a StGB to supress a book of prison
101 Bundesministerium des Justiz, "Ausreichende Stratvorschriften
zur Bekaempfung des Terrorismus" Bulletin 77 (11 August) 1982, 692.
102 ibid.
103 ibid.
104 ibid.
105 Elendt, Trunk, Stern 42 (19) 1989, 236.
106 ibid., 240.