The process barely ran for a quarter of an hour on Monday, when it was interrupted.

The judge, prosecutor, defendant and her defense attorney were watching videos shortly before that, which were recorded on October 26, 2020.

A bridge over the Autobahn 661 in Frankfurt-Oberrad can be seen on it.

You see two people hanging from climbing ropes on the bridge, you see a banner.

And you see a person who has been arrested, see a policeman turn his face towards the camera.

Alexander Juergs

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The judge says that he is convinced that the person arrested in the video is the defendant Sarah K.

Your defense lawyer considers this to be inadmissible and applies for bias.

He fears that his client cannot expect a fair trial if the judge assumes at the beginning of the trial that she is the person in the video.

Sarah K., born in 1996, who wears wire glasses and half-length hair, who has thrown a scarf with a paisley pattern on and claims to have last worked as a seasonal worker, are accused by the public prosecutor of coercion in a particularly serious case and violations of the right of assembly.

She is said to have participated in an illegal protest against the expansion of Autobahn 49 through the Dannenröder Forest.

Massive interference in road traffic

On three different bridges, on the A3, the A 5 and the A 661, activists of the forest occupation scene roped down in the morning hours of October 26, 2020. This created traffic jams for miles. Traffic on the A 661 stood still for more than three hours. “If you take the forest from us, then we'll take the streets”: This is how the radical climate protectors justified their action, it was on their banner. They received a great deal of incomprehension for this form of protest - mainly because a blockade had already resulted in an accident shortly before.

The process will only continue in the afternoon, when the application for bias has now been rejected. The policeman who was in charge of the operation at the time testifies. Blocking the autobahn, he says, was inevitable; the dangers for both drivers and activists were too great. A so-called height intervention team came to the bridge from the Dannenröder forest: police officers who are specially trained for operations against climbing activists. When they fetched the ropes from the bridge, they offered no resistance. But the activists had painted their faces and taped over fingertips so that they could not be identified. Sarah K. was held in custody for five weeks. Only then did she reveal her identity.

The prosecutor calls for a suspended prison sentence, and her defense lawyer calls for an acquittal.

The judge's verdict is in between: He sentenced Sarah K. to a fine of 90 daily rates.

The action was "a massive interference" in road traffic, but he does not see a particularly severe case of coercion.

“Everyone should expect to get stuck in a traffic jam on the autobahn,” he says.