Open letter to the Federal Constitutional Court: Peace activists demand the acceptance of the constitutional complaint of a US activist to review the illegality under international law of the US nuclear bombs stationed in Germany.
Hamburg, 1.30.2023
U.S. peace activist John LaForge has been in prison since January 10 for his participation in nonviolent civil disobedience actions. LaForge filed a constitutional complaint in the Federal Constitutional Court against the sentence in April last year that is pending. He was convicted for entering the grounds of the NATO airbase “Fliegerhorst Büchel” on July 15, 2018 and on August 6, 2018, damaging the perimeter fence, in order to demonstrate against the deployment of nuclear weapons there. The nuclear weapons are stationed there in violation of international law.
In the meantime, activists have filed constitutional complaints 17 times, but all of them have been rejected for consideration (John’s, was finally rejected by the high court in February 2023). “In doing so, the courts should have applied international law here. And that’s why I’m fighting back against this injustice by going to jail,” says John LaForge. Two women, Stefanie Augustin and Marion Küpker, filed complaints with the European Court of Human Rights in November 2021 because of the non-adoption of their complaint. The court’s response is still pending.
The retired judge Bernd Hahnfeld, board member of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, writes in his “Statement on the imprisonment of John Michael LaForge and other peace activists” in detail about the errors of judgment of the Regional Court of Koblenz.
On January 30 the Open Letter to the Federal Constitutional Court was sent, signed by 77 people in solidarity. With this action, the signatories, who come from the nationwide German peace movement, want to lend more weight to John LaForge’s demand that the Constitutional Court finally ascertain the illegality of the nuclear weapons deployment under international law. Copies of the Open Letter were also sent to those responsible for the storage of U.S. nuclear bombs in Germany (“nuclear sharing”), among others: Federal Chancellor Scholz, Federal Foreign Minister Baerbock, U.S. Ambassador in Berlin Gutmann, Federal Minister of Defense Pistorius, Federal Minister of Justice Buschmann, and Commodore Schneider of the Tactical Air Wing 33 of the German Air Force at Büchel/Südeifel Air Base (nuclear weapons base).
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