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Flowers and candles in front of the entrance area of a Jehovah's Witnesses community center (March 2023)
Photo: Christian Charisius / dpa
More than a year after the attack at a meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses in Hamburg, the investigation against an employee of the weapons authority has been discontinued.
The public prosecutor's office said that the official had violated official duties by neither documenting nor forwarding information about the authors of an anonymous letter in which the later attacker's psychological problems were pointed out. “However, the resulting suspicion of negligent homicide in six cases and negligent bodily harm in office in eleven cases could not be substantiated with sufficient certainty,” it said.
Rather, the investigations led to the conclusion that even if the accused had acted properly, the weapon of the later assassin Philipp F. would not necessarily have had to be confiscated before the crime. Two legal opinions were prepared which came to different conclusions in this regard.
The legal situation can also be “interpreted in different ways”: If there is “valid suspicion of a mental illness,” the firearm cannot usually simply be withdrawn. An expert report must first be obtained. As a result, the rampage “with a preponderance of probability” could not have been prevented for purely temporal reasons, even if the employee had acted correctly.
On March 9, 2023, after a community meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses in Hamburg, Philipp F. killed seven people and ultimately himself with a firearm.
In mid-February, the public prosecutor's office had already stopped the investigation against three members of the shooting club of the later shooter due to minor guilt. The members of the examination committee were accused of false certification in office.
bbr/dpa