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Hamm (dpa / lnw) - In a legal dispute over a prohibited image, a club chairman from Bielefeld prevailed before the Hamm Higher Regional Court.
Since 1994, a two by three meter picture with a flag of the National Liberation Front of Kurdistan (ERNK), a sub-organization of the PKK, which has been banned in Germany since 1993, has been on the roller shutter of an independent youth center.
According to the OLG, the chairman of the center's development association cannot be punished for not removing the picture, as the Bielefeld District Court had ruled in the first instance.
Accordingly, the man should pay a fine of 600 euros (Ref .: III-3 RVs 47/20).
In the second instance, the Bielefeld district court acquitted the man.
The public prosecutor's office was appealed to the OLG.
According to the OLG judges, the defendant did not attach the picture himself in 1994.
He has only been the club's chairman since 2013.
He therefore has no criminally relevant obligation to remove the picture.
By simply failing to remove it, he was not liable to prosecution, especially since the authorities had not voiced any criticism until 2017.
It was only after an anonymous email in 2018 that charges were brought.
According to the reasoning, the OLG does not share the opinion of the public prosecutor's office for the tolerance of the image by the association.
Political convictions should not be used as grounds for criminal liability of the accused if he refuses to remove the picture.
This is a violation of the fundamental right anchored in the Basic Law not to be disadvantaged because of one's political opinion.