THE RUDOLF REPORT

11. HUNTING GERMAR RUDOLFother ‘thought’ crimes like writing naughty letters to Jewish representativesand selling prohibited revisionist literature—were prosecuted aswell and, together with his first conviction, led to an accumulatedprison term of more than five years. Eventually, even his defense lawyerLudwig Bock was prosecuted and sentenced for too vigorouslydefending Deckert by asking for permission to introduce revisionistevidence. This was considered criminal behavior because Bock allegedlyindicated with this that he identifies himself with revisionistthoughts. 562 In a similar case, the well-know German right-wing defenselawyer Jürgen Rieger was put on trial in 2000, because duringthe proceedings against one of his clients in summer 1996, he had fileda motion to introduce me as an expert witness as evidence for the factthat his client’s revisionist claims were well founded. Though JürgenRieger was initially acquitted by the Hamburg District Court, 563 theGerman Federal Supreme Court subsequently overturned this verdict,demanding the sentencing and punishment of every lawyer who daresto ask for, or introduce, evidence challenging the common ‘knowledge’about the Holocaust. 564 Thus, it is clear that every judge, whodares to hand out lenient sentences to revisionist, at least risks anabrupt end of his career, and defense lawyers trying to defend theirclients effectively may themselves be prosecuted for that.In what follows, I shall show by my own experience which indicatesthat the rule of law in the German state has many flaws that makeit easy for the judicial system in general and the judges in particular todeliberately make bad decisions uncorrectable, because they have theappearance of being decided according to the rule of law.Again and again in various sorts of company I encounter the samedisbelieving astonishment as to the state of the German criminal justicesystem that overcame me at the beginning of the prosecution avalancheheim 1995 (District Court Mannheim, ref. (13) 5 Ns 67/96) online: www.vho.org/D/Deckert)562 VffG 3(2) (1999), p. 208; online: www.vho.org/VffG/1999/2/Zornig208.html. As a consequenceof his prosecution, Bock subsequently changed his defense strategy, and when assignedto defend the Australian revisionist Dr. Fredrick Töben in November 1999, he remainedcompletely silent in order to prevent further prosecutions, hence rendering any defenseof Dr. Töben impossible.563 Hamburger Morgenpost, Nov. 14, 2000; see “Verteidiger Rieger siegt in Verfahren wegen‘unzulässiger Verteidigung’”, VffG 4(3&4) (2000), p. 457 (online:www.vho.org/News/D/News3_00.html#n7)564 German Federal Supreme Court , BGH, ref. 5 StR 485/01; see German daily press from April11, 2002 (taz, Bild, Frankfurter Rundschau, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,all on page 2!).331