German court denies appeal for revision in the TKP/ML conviction in Munich

In July 2020 ten revolutionaries were sentenced to prison from three to six years and a half in Germany for allegedly being part of “a foreign terrorist organization”, the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist. The revolutionaries were convicted on the basis of the article 129b of the Penal Code. There was no concrete proof of the activists committing any particular crime, there was only the suspicion of being a member of TKP/ML, even though it is not banned in Germany and is not on any international list of terrorist organizations. The only country where it is banned is Turkey, where the Party is leading an ongoing People’s War against the old State. Recently the defense of the convicted appealed to have the decision revised. Other than pointing out the above fact that the defendants were convicted on the basis of suspicion of membership in an organization which is not illegal in Germany, the defense said that there were mistakes in the criminal proceedings, for example, use of illegal evidence against the defendants. The court however denied the appeal. The revolutionaries were released to wait for the decision, but now they will have to go back to prison and serve the rest of the sentences, as the convictions will remain in effect, with the only possibility for revision being a constitutional complaint or taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The revolutionaries were arrested in 2015 in a series of raids. The proceedings started in 2016, and was one of the longest political trials in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. They were detained without a conviction for a long time, five years in the longest case. It was the first time anyone had been convicted according to the article 129b for belonging to a foreign terrorist organization and for belonging to the TKP/ML in Germany, and there was a clear intention of the court to make it an example of persecution against revolutionaries. The conviction was widely protested in Germany and internationally in 2020, with revolutionaries denouncing the anti-communist attack of the German State.