That Seda Basay-Yildiz is fearless, has proven the defense lawyer from Frankfurt last in the case of Islamist Sami A. Their commitment is to the rule of law, even if that means fighting for a man who may have been Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard.
Among lawyers, her mandate has earned her a lot of respect. The expected hostility has taken her into account. Basay-Yildiz is not about having it comfortable. The 42-year-old's aim is to live in a society where the law applies to everyone.
Also for police officers, you have to add currently. Five officials from Frankfurt - four men and one woman - are said to have exchanged right-wing extremist content via chat. And there may be links between the group and a fax that Basay-Yildiz received in early August. The letter reveals the family's private address and the name of Basay-Yildiz's two-year-old daughter, who is threatened with death.
Due to a query of reports to the lawyer, the suspect is in the room, the police could have sent the fax itself - or the data have passed the lawyer to third parties. The state criminal investigation determined.
Seda Basay-Yildiz may not comment on the current events surrounding the allegedly right-wing extremist cell in the Frankfurt police. (Read more about the case here.) But the tremendous suspicion that possibly police under the pseudonym "NSU 2.0" threatened to "slaughter" her daughter, she will have noted with less disbelief than many others. She never had any faith in the police as a defense lawyer. And there has been a process since it's been prepared anyway: the NSU trial in Munich.
Defense lawyers must confidently face the investigative apparatus, judges and prosecutors. Under lawyer, it is considered frowned upon to show emotions, especially among defense lawyers. But man does not just disappear under the lawyer's robe. This was also stated by Seda Basay-Yildiz.
DPA
Seda Basay-Yildiz in her office
In the NSU trial, the lawyer defended no defendants, but represented as a plaintiff lawyer the family of the NSU murder victim Enver Simsek. She drove to Munich week after week for five years, worked through the nights, and did not shy away from the temper tantrums of presiding judge Manfred Götzl when she thought she had to say a few bars.
But unbearable for them was that the investigators in the years before the release of the NSU seemed to have lost all inhibitions in dealing with family Simsek and the families of the other eight victims with a migration background. The widow of Enver Simsek presented her with photos of a blonde woman, claiming that this was her husband's lover. It was a lie. The police wanted to lure the grieving woman out of the reserve, hoping she would reveal the knowledge that leads to the killers.
But Adile Simsek had no knowledge she could have revealed. There was never an apology. And at some point Seda Basay-Yildiz had reached the point where she took the investigators' failure personally.
"I have become more uncompromising"
When other NSU victims' advocates dismissed institutional racism as humbug in their pleadings, Seda Basay-Yildiz was struck by how much she had done so. She thought it naive and ignorant. How angry they made those speeches of the colleagues could experience who met them directly afterwards in the café next to the court. She was stunned and furious with herself that she was so close.
To see how much injustice has been done to the victims of NSU, Seda Basay-Yildiz has changed. "I've become more uncompromising," she once said. People who express themselves racially no longer tolerate them in their environment. The lawyer started to freak with Germany. The first time in her life. That's how it felt to her. Or maybe she was not cheating with her homeland, but with the state of society, in which it suddenly did not seem any more offensive to rush loudly against people.
The NSU trial left its mark on her. "To have the feeling of not belonging, no matter what you do and how integrated you are, has become stronger," she wrote in a guest article for the Süddeutsche Zeitung three years ago: "The feeling of not feeling safe, and Also, can not claim the protection of the police and the judiciary, also Can anyone imagine what that means? Especially for someone like me who has studied law and defends the rule of law? "
The fact that Germany is her country is, in spite of everything, out of the question for the lawyer. Which country should it be otherwise? Her parents are from Turkey, Seda Basay-Yildiz herself was born in Marburg, Hesse.