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The former federal judge Thomas Fischer recently joined the defense team of director Dieter Wedel, who was accused of rape.

This is reported by the "Spiegel".

Fischer received his approval this week and now works as an external lawyer for the Munich law firm Gauweiler & Sauter.

The lawyer and CSU politician Peter Gauweiler and the defense attorney Dörthe Korn had already represented Wedel.

Co-partner of the firm is the CSU politician Alfred Sauter, who himself recently hit the headlines because he is said to have received high six-figure sums as a lawyer for the mediation of masks in the course of the mask affair.

Sauter is being investigated, among other things, on suspicion of tax evasion.

Meanwhile, the Wedel case is the first case of Thomas Fischer as a criminal defense attorney, who has also become known as a columnist and through media appearances in recent years.

In 2019, Fischer wrote an essay on "10 reasons why I am happy not to have become a criminal defense lawyer".

Fischer was a judge at the Federal Court of Justice from 2000 to 2017, then he took early retirement.

He recently wrote a book on sexual offenses: "Sex and Crime: About Intimacy, Morality and Punishment".

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In an interview with the "Spiegel", the three defense lawyers said Wedels wanted to assert that the rape allegation that the actress Jany Tempel made because of an incident in 1996 should be statute-barred.

Rape would become statute-barred after 20 years.

Due to a new regulation from 2015, the statute of limitations in the case of rape should only start when the alleged victim has turned thirty.

The defenders now doubt that this “can be reconciled with guarantees based on the rule of law,” says Gauweiler.

If necessary before the constitutional court

"One would have to interpret this provision in such a way that it is not applied in a case like this," added Fischer.

If necessary, you want to take this question to the Federal Constitutional Court.

The defenders also apparently want to cast doubt on the credibility of the victim witness.

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After seeing Wedel again, Tempel wrote in her diary: “I'm flying in front of Freud”, only a short time after the alleged rape.

“How does that fit together?” Asks Gauweiler, “we have to investigate that”.

The defense lawyers also want to address the fact that Tempel and other witnesses are actors - "people who like to slip into other roles quickly, but who also have the gift of being convincing in this role," as defense attorney Korn says.

Acting may attract "people who have difficulty in correctly assessing border crossings," says Fischer.

He added: "If someone rushes into a dangerous situation without a plan, it has to do with personal responsibility."