36th day of trial against the 6 accused anti-fascists in the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court

The ventilation in the state security building of the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court has failed. But that's not the only reason why there's bad air in the meeting room: the first discussion begins after less than a minute. Police officer Büttner does not want to reveal her first name or age when establishing her identity. Her name is in the file anyway and is also known to various viewers. She refers to the permission to testify; the defense objects to this. Büttner doesn't want to give a reason for her decision. 15 minutes of discussion are followed by a 20-minute break, during which the Senate decides that the witness does not have to give her first name, even if it classifies the “general danger due to criminal experience” as unjustified.

When the interrogation does begin, it involves various videos from Budapest. Büttner then wanted to identify various people, mainly by their clothing, and in individual sequences by their faces. Partly by combining their findings with identification of other cops or overlapping camera images. How exactly she came to the identifications is not really clear. In particular, it's about the videos that show Budapest's Szell Kalman Square. We saw plenty of videos of the train stops during the proceedings.

In the screenshots shown, the people are little more than pixelated figures in the background. There can be no question of a recognizable face. The clothing also provides at best only shadowy color spots. But Büttner claims to have recognized, among other things, the movement patterns of Luca and Paula on the pitch in the countless videos. The two spied on Toth and made eye contact with him. When asked, she admits that this is just an assumption and that she cannot remember any such eye contact.

She also reproduces the distances between people in the video rather arbitrarily. Sometimes it is about 6 meters, sometimes 10-12 meters, overall “closer rather than bigger”. At that point in time, Toth had apparently already walked around the stop and was no longer captured by the camera perspective.

Then it's about a correction note. On a screenshot, all the names of the people previously identified there have been corrected by Büttner himself. The witness cannot answer when and how the error was noticed by whom. However, she is certain that the error was caused by a mix-up of names and never by incorrect identification. She can't remember this, but she "infers it" from the correction. In any case, the whole thing does not make reliable identification any more likely. There doesn't seem to have been any systematic troubleshooting.

Finally, there are questions about a follow-up investigation: In this case, the witness claims to have recognized Paula in the back area of ​​a stop where Toth gets on local transport. Paula was able to recognize him by his jacket despite the darkness and distance. When asked what this assessment is based on, Büttner refers to her “impression from the videos”. She was never there. Neither during the day nor at night. We also take a look at the jacket: A dark black and gray winter jacket without logos and without any recognizable features.

After a short digression into the findings about a suspect who is still in hiding, the witness is released.

After the lunch break, the protocols of the national emergency service in Hungary and the medical reports on László Dudog and his partner Oszolya Fabian will be read out. This responds to the defense's request for evidence to test Fabian's claim about Dudog's long unconsciousness until he was in the ambulance. The protocol reveals: “The patient welcomes us sitting on the curb, he is cooperative.” He briefly lost consciousness before arriving and there was no immediate threat to his life. Dudog receives the maximum number of points in the established neurological GC score. The medical report also contains no news. The head injuries including concussion are described, but further injuries to the chest or pelvic area were excluded. The reports about Fabian are also to be expected: She did not need emergency medical treatment on site, she had a superficial laceration on her head that would heal within a week.

After this reading lasted over an hour and the atmosphere became increasingly bad, the Senate decided not to make any further explanations.

Two Senate decisions follow: At the suggestion of the defense, the court decides to drop the accusation of attempted grievous bodily harm against six passers-by who were nearby when Toth was attacked. Various allegations against Emmi regarding forgery of documents, misuse of identification documents and fraud were also dropped.

This ends the day of negotiations and continues tomorrow.

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