Harald Range

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Harald Range (born February 16, 1948 in Göttingen ; † May 2, 2018 in Karlsruhe ) was a German lawyer and Attorney General at the Federal Court of Justice from November 2011 to September 2015 . Before that, he had worked in the judicial service of Lower Saxony since the early 1970s . From 2001 to 2011, he headed the General Prosecutor's Office in Celle as Prosecutor General and was also the President of the Coordination Office of the Conference of European General Prosecutors of the Council of Europe . After the case of the investigations opened by the Federal Prosecutor's Office against two journalists for treason had escalated, the then Federal Minister of Justice Heiko Maas (SPD) then applied to Federal President Ranges on August 4, 2015 for temporary retirement .

Life

Harald Range grew up in his native Göttingen, graduated from high school there in 1966 and then studied law and journalism from 1966 to 1971 at the University of Göttingen and the University of Bonn . In 1971 he passed his first state examination in law in Göttingen and then completed a traineeship in Lower Saxony from 1971 to 1975 . After the second state examination in 1975 in Hanover, Range worked from 1975 to 1978 in the Lower Saxony judicial service as a judge at the district court of Lüneburg and as a judge at the district court in Lüneburg, Northeim and Osterode, among others, dealing with civil and criminal matters. From 1978 to 1986 Range was employed as a public prosecutor at the Göttingen Public Prosecutor's Office , where he worked on economic and environmental matters and acted as press spokesman. From 1986 to 1989 he first worked as a senior public prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor's Office in Celle .

From 1989 to the beginning of 2001 Range worked in the Lower Saxony Ministry of Justice in Hanover, where he was employed in various departments. From 1991 he headed the department for criminal procedural law , most recently the entire department for criminal law and criminal procedural law. As of January 2001, Range took over the management of the General Public Prosecutor's Office in Celle as General Prosecutor and was thus directly subordinate to the Lower Saxony Ministry of Justice. Of the three general public prosecutor's offices in Braunschweig, Celle and Oldenburg, the authority in Celle is the largest public prosecutor's office in Lower Saxony. In addition, Ranges authority had central tasks in the area of information and communication technology , criminal assistance , victim protection and the prosecution of organized crime and corruption as well as the European Judicial Network of the Criminal Justice (EJN). Range worked as Attorney General in Celle until November 2011.

The headquarters of the Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe

On November 17, 2011 he was appointed as the successor to Monika Harms as Attorney General at the Federal Court of Justice (BGH).

Range was a member of the Conference of German Attorneys General . From 2002 to 2006 he was German representative in the Conference of European General Prosecutors of the Council of Europe (English: Conference of Prosecutors General of Europe ) (CPGE); since 2006 he has been a representative of the German public prosecutor's office in the CPGE. He also served as President of the CPGE and the Consultative Council of European Prosecutors (CCPE) of the Council of Europe from 2004 to 2008 . The fifth European conference of the CPGE took place in May 2004 in Celle. From 2013 to 2014 he was president of the network of public prosecutors at the supreme courts of the member states of the European Union (English: Network of Public Prosecutors or equivalent institutions at the Supreme Judicial Courts of the Member States of the European Union ). Range also worked as an expert advisor for various international institutions, especially in Central and Eastern European countries.

Harald Range was married for a second time and had two daughters from his first marriage. He last lived in Celle, where he also did voluntary work. Range was a member of the FDP and a judge at an arbitration tribunal . Until 2011 he was also chairman of the Celle adult education center.

Range died of a heart attack in May 2018 at the age of 70 while visiting a café in Karlsruhe .

Legal Positions and Controversies

The legal positions represented by Harald Range as Public Prosecutor General in Lower Saxony's judicial service attracted public attention from case to case regionally and sometimes also supra-regionally, to which his many years of activity as head of Lower Saxony's largest public prosecutor's office as well as his national and international involvement in the judiciary contributed. Meanwhile, the role he supported the public prosecutor's office in the Hells Angels trial in Hanover in 2008 received public criticism.

As a federal prosecutor, Range came under massive public criticism both because of his stance in the NSA surveillance affair that arose in 2013 and because of an investigation he opened against two authors of the blog netzpolitik.org in May 2015 on charges of treason , some of which also called for his resignation has been.

Football World Cup

In the run-up to the 2006 soccer World Cup in Germany, where the Celle Public Prosecutor's Office was responsible for the Hannover World Cup, Range developed a “zero tolerance strategy” in order to be able to react effectively to feared hooligans . Foreigners who are guilty of an act that is punishable by imprisonment should be expelled immediately. Since deportation actions are normally reserved for the immigration offices, Range agreed with foreign judicial authorities that their public prosecutors should be deployed on site, such as for the preliminary round match of the national team of Poland in Hanover. Requests from foreign public prosecutors to transfer offenders should then be dealt with immediately.

corruption

In the case of corruption offenses , Range saw the main task in combating so-called structural corruption and relied on the establishment of specialty public prosecutor's offices, as had been the case in Hanover since 2001 and in Verden since 2006 for the districts of Lüneburg, Stade and Verden. “Corruption damages both the public's trust in the good conduct of office and free competition. It tempts competitors with integrity and it leads to higher prices, ”said Range, explaining that ways were being sought to clear up the dark field around smear and smear and to equalize unlawful pecuniary gains through consistent prosecution. The point, according to Range, is that the “knowledge of corrupt facts is expanded through a high number of cases and the investigative procedures and processing methods are improved”.

Hells Angels trial

In early 2009, defended the Range "lenient sentence in the Hells Angels - process in Hanover," as it came up public criticism and a criminal complaint for violation of the law and in the Official obstruction of justice was refunded. The trial of 14 Hells Angels members who attacked the clubhouse of the hostile rocker club Bandidos near Bremen in 2006 and seriously injured five men in the process ended “surprisingly quickly” at the end of 2008 after an agreement between the court , public prosecutor and defense . Three men were sentenced to prison terms and eleven defendants were given suspended sentences . "Anyone who knows the rocker milieu knows how difficult it is to get any conclusive testimony in such an environment ", Range countered the criticism and said that the judiciary takes violent clashes between gangs very seriously and in no way assumes minor offenses .

NSA surveillance affair

In a press conference on December 11, 2013, Range stated that he did not see sufficient evidence to substantiate investigations into the 2013 surveillance and espionage affair. In addition, he needed an instruction from Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger for investigations , which had not taken place. The green member of the Bundestag Hans-Christian Ströbele , who himself had visited the whistleblower Edward Snowden in Moscow, remarked in an interview on Deutschlandfunk that “everybody, including the US President, including the Federal Government” assumes that the Chancellor's cell phone is was bugged. In this context, he described the behavior of the Federal Public Prosecutor as "egg dance".

Oktoberfest attack

On December 11, 2014, Attorney General Harald Range announced in Karlsruhe his decision to resume the formal investigation into the Munich Oktoberfest attack on September 26, 1980, based on the testimony of a previously unknown witness. He commissioned the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office with the criminal investigation.

Investigations into treason against netzpolitik.org

In May 2015, the Public Prosecutor General led an investigation on suspicion of treason against journalists Markus Beckedahl and Andre on the basis of two criminal charges from the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Hans-Georg Maaßen , from February and April of the same year Meister from the blog netzpolitik.org . They had fully published documents classified as "classified information (VS-VERTRAULICH) " on a planned expansion of the BfV's monitoring capacities in the area of ​​social media in the blog. This gave them and other unauthorized parties knowledge of confidential documents.

After this was published on July 30, 2015, Range announced a day later that the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office would initially refrain from “possible executive measures” and would first create an external expert opinion, which should clarify whether state secrets were published at all. He ordered the provisional suspension of the investigative measures in May, and the report was then commissioned in mid-June. On August 4, 2015, Range announced in a press release that Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas had instructed him to "stop the report immediately and withdraw the report". He followed this instruction. He also stated: "To influence investigations because their possible outcome does not appear politically opportune is an unbearable interference with the independence of the judiciary." In a press conference he accused Maas of wanting to withhold the report because its content was not politically political was opportune and supported the charge of treason. Maas' authority stated that it did not instruct Range "after knowing the preliminary assessment of the external appraiser to withdraw the appraisal contract". Rather, the withdrawal of the assignment to the expert was "jointly agreed" with the Federal Public Prosecutor, without knowledge of the possible content of the expert opinion. On the same day, Maas Range took temporary retirement .

Several lawyers criticized Range's statements because the legal situation does not provide for the postulated "independence of the judiciary" for a public prosecutor's office. Others pointed out that the Justice Minister's instructions must be lawful and should not be based on political opportunities, such as the interest in protecting fellow MPs or journalists from criminal prosecution.

The federal government wrote about the scope of the right to issue instructions in response to a small question from the Green parliamentary group:

“This supervision authorizes the issuing of general instructions and instructions in individual cases, both with regard to the legal as well as the actual handling of the matter. However, the supervision is subject to limits, which in turn result from the principle of legality (Section 152, Paragraph 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) and the obligation to comply with the law (Article 20 Paragraph 3 of the Basic Law). Insofar as the law does not allow any discretion or scope for assessment, the exercise of the right to issue instructions is out of the question. "

The federal government stated at the end of August 2015 that the Ministry of Justice had not issued any instructions to the Federal Public Prosecutor because it was bound by the principle of legality, although there had been doubts about the accuracy of the investigation. Rather, Range and State Secretary Stefanie Hubig had jointly come to the opinion that the assignment to an external expert had become obsolete because the ministry itself should produce its own opinion at short notice.

Range's version that he had been instructed to stop the preparation of the report immediately is corroborated by a note from a senior public prosecutor to the Federal Prosecutor's office about a telephone call from Range on August 3, 2015, which Der Spiegel made one day before the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state elections published in September 2016. There it says:

"According to the Federal Prosecutor General, State Secretary Dr. Annigate him that he has to stop the preparation of the expert opinion immediately and withdraw the expert opinion. If he does not follow this instruction, he will be released immediately. "

Range then, so the note, instructed his employee to “contact the expert and stop the report”.

Because of the events, the Berlin public prosecutor's office had investigated Maas on suspicion of preventing punishment. She dropped the case in March 2016. She also confirmed Range's version that he had been instructed to cancel the expert opinion, but denied the suspicion that Hubig had been thwarted. The Tagesspiegel reported on this on August 21, 2016.

honors and awards

Fonts

  • Current developments in the relationship between the police and the judiciary. Seminar from June 11-13, 2001 (PFA final report) . Police Leadership Academy (PFA), Münster (Westphalia) 2001. (With: Hans Daneke)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ex- Federal Public Prosecutor dies in Karlsruhe on stuttgarter-zeitung.de (accessed on May 3, 2018)
  2. ↑ a b c d Attorney General Harald Range. In: generalbundesanwalt.de. The Federal Prosecutor General at the Federal Court of Justice, accessed on July 31, 2015 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Notes on the 40th anniversary of the service of Attorney General Harald Range. (PDF, 77 KB) In: staatsanwaltschaften.niedersachsen.de. Celle Public Prosecutor's Office, July 23, 2008, accessed May 20, 2010 .
  4. ↑ See list of German public prosecutors .
  5. ↑ BMJ November 17 , 2011 : New Attorney General Harald Range appointed ( Memento from November 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Conference of Prosecutors General of Europe (English) ( Memento from January 29, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Range relies on cooperation with countries - tagesschau.de, November 18, 2011 ( Memento from November 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ^ Göran Schattauer: Red card for rioters. In: Focus , No. 2 (2006), January 9, 2006, accessed on May 20, 2010 .
  9. ^ Stephan Jeschke: Better to refuse Christmas stollen. Verden public prosecutor's office has declared war on corruption. Rotenburger Rundschau, August 23, 2006, accessed on May 20, 2010 .
  10. ↑ Sonja Fröhlich: Hells Angels. Prosecutor defends mild verdict. Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung , January 9, 2009, accessed on May 20, 2010 .
  11. ↑ Investigations "only with pointed fingers" Deutschlandfunk, December 11, 2013
  12. ↑ Federal Prosecutor sees no reason for NSA proceedings , Zeit Online, December 11, 2013
  13. ↑ Press release of the Attorney General of December 11, 2014. The Federal Prosecutor General at the Federal Court of Justice on generalbundesanwalt.de, December 11, 2014, p. 40/2014 , accessed on August 27, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Press release on the procedure based on criminal charges from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution . Press release 29/2015 from August 2, 2015 on generalbundesanwalt.de
  15. ^ Rolf Clement: President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution files criminal charges . On July 4, 2015 on deutschlandfunk.de
  16. ↑ Andre Meister: Secret Money Rain: The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is working on “Mass data analysis of Internet content ” (updates) ( Memento of the original from March 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On February 25, 2015 on netzpolitik.org @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / netzpolitik.org
  17. ↑ Andre Meister: Secret section group: We present the new constitution protection unit for the expansion of the Internet surveillance (updates) . On April 15, 2015 on netzpolitik.org
  18. ↑ Hans Leyendecker , Georg Mascolo , Robert Roßmann: How it came to the investigation against the blogger . On August 3, 2015 on sueddeutsche.de
  19. ^ Proceedings for treason against "netzpolitik.org". In: Zeit Online . July 30, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  20. ↑ Netzpolitik.org: Solidarity with the # land traitors. In: Spiegel Online . July 31, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  21. ↑ Wave of indignation over allegations of treason against Netzpolitik.org. In: Heise Online . July 31, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  22. ↑ Federal Prosecutor General should be retired. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . July 30, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  23. ↑ "I am annoyed by the disparity". In: Tagesschau.de. July 31, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  24. ↑ Ursula Knapp: Harald Range goes on the offensive against Heiko Maas . On August 3, 2015 on tagesspiegel.de
  25. ↑ GBA press release. Retrieved August 5, 2015 .
  26. ↑ Range's strike against Maas. In: Tagesschau.de. August 4, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  27. ↑ BMJV press release of August 4, 2015: "On the statements of Federal Prosecutor General Range" The Federal Prosecutor General has to go. In: Tagesschau.de. August 4, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  28. ↑ Markus Kompa: Initial suspicion for country stupor. In: heise.de . August 6, 2015, accessed August 6, 2015 .
  29. ↑ @vieuxrenard: #Landesverrat: Why the accusation cannot be legally upheld. In: netzpolitik.org. August 4, 2015, accessed August 6, 2015 .
  30. ^ Gerhard Strate: "Netzpolitik.org" affair: Back to the Inquisition. In: zeit.de . August 6, 2015, accessed August 6, 2015 .
  31. ↑ Hans Hugo Klein: Doubly dependent: The Federal Attorney General . In: FAZ , August 20, 2015, p. 6.
  32. ↑ Bundestag printed paper 18/5859 of August 26, 2016, page 6
  33. ↑ Bundestag printed paper 18/5859 of August 26, 2016, page 6
  34. ↑ Konstantin von Hammerstein: Investigations against Netzpolitik.org: Note from the Federal Prosecutor's Office incriminates Minister Maas . In: Der Spiegel , September 2, 2016.
  35. ↑ Jost Müller-Neuhof: Affair about “netzpolitik.org” - government instructed investigators and later denied it . In: Der Tagesspiegel , August 21, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Range, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and attorney general
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen
DATE OF DEATH 2nd May 2018
Place of death Karlsruhe