Operation Spring

Operation Spring is the name of a large-scale operation by the Austrian police in 1999 and 2000 in the fight against organized drug trafficking. In the course of this operation, numerous people of African origin were arrested, accused and, in some cases, legally convicted. The access on May 27, 1999, when around 850 police officers stormed the apartments and refugee homes of the accused throughout Austria, was preceded by a lengthy observation, during which, among other things, the “ great eavesdropping ” was used for the first time .

Operation Spring

Operation Spring was the largest criminal police operation in Austria in the Second Republic. A total of 127 people were arrested. Around a third of those arrested had to be released after a short time. Some were arrested for illegal residence and subsequently deported from Austria . Part of the mass media , above all the Neue Kronen Zeitung , reported an unprecedented success of the police in the fight against organized crime : " With the help of the first large eavesdropping attack, it was possible to arrest the bosses of an international Nigerian drug ring ". In particular, the Viennese city newspaper Falter and some publications by anti-racist activists criticized the police action as racist immediately after it became known. At that time, a large number of the affected Africans were active in Vienna's Black Community, which became very active after the killing of Marcus Omofuma by Austrian police officers and tried to organize something to counter the burgeoning racism.

The proceedings against around 100 Africans developed into one of the largest judicial proceedings in Austrian post-war history. Almost all of the accused were sentenced to prison terms, some of which were long.

It should be noted in this context that the optical and acoustic monitoring used in the run-up to Operation Spring was only in trial.

Criticisms of the process

The methods used by the police and the judiciary did not only arouse resentment among human rights organizations . Above all, the fairness of the process is emphatically questioned.

Among other things, the poor quality of the acoustic and optical recordings was criticized , which meant that people were difficult or impossible to identify on the recordings. In addition, the assignment of the voices to the people on the video recordings turned out to be problematic. In the last open proceedings, experts were able to prove that it was not possible to clearly assign a voice to the relevant accused on the recordings and was therefore useless as evidence . The court followed the line of defense on this point and rejected the allocation of votes made by the public prosecutor and the police. This was the only case where the allocation of votes was checked.

Some key witnesses were used in the proceedings. These witnesses, who incriminated the majority of the accused Africans, appeared masked and anonymous. They were dressed in such a way that their faces were covered by dark motorcycle helmets and ski hoods. The personal details of these witnesses were also not disclosed to the defense. This type of interrogation has now been found inadmissible by the Supreme Court. Numerous defense questions were rejected by the judge in order to protect the witnesses. One of the main witnesses later revoked his testimony during the filming of the Schuster and Sindelgruber documentary about Operation Spring.

The role of the interpreter, Douglas Idehen, and his translations of the surveillance footage were also criticized. Since the majority of the accused could be heard on the recordings in their native Ibo , a translator had to be called in. In the course of the last proceedings, in which a second translator was used, it turned out that several passages relevant to the proceedings were incorrectly translated by the first interpreter or could not be found on the tapes. Furthermore, passages were only translated accordingly and not literally, as would be usual. The interpreter assigned the voices himself, although in the last proceedings even a corresponding expert could not do this, at least for the last defendant, due to the poor quality of the recordings. Like the key witnesses, the translator was anonymized in the process. Defense questions posed to the translator were also dismissed by the court to protect the witness, making it impossible for the defense to verify his qualifications. However, the translations and assignments of the votes were used in the proceedings as an important basis for the indictment. Furthermore, this translator was not informed in the preliminary proceedings that a wrong translation would be punishable.

The following passage in several reasons for the verdict caused indignation among the convicted and their lawyers as well as critics of the proceedings: "[...] Sale of a no longer ascertainable, but in any case large amount of heroin and cocaine, to end-users who remained unknown [...]".

Reactions to criticism

The allegations said the judiciary and the Justice Department that all decisions were made in more than 100 criminal cases of different independent courts, moreover, often by juries where lay judges were involved from the population in the verdict. Another counter-argument is that judgments were never made on the basis of evidence alone, but were based on a variety of evidence. It is argued that even if the evidence presented was poor or poorly usable, in most cases the courts found the evidence sufficient to convict.

Justice Minister Karin Gastinger and Interior Minister Liese Prokop made only brief comments in this regard and made their further course of action dependent on the outcome of outstanding criminal proceedings on this topic.

Drug bosses, petty criminals or victims of justice?

Obiora C-Ik Ofoedu

The Nigerian writer and political activist Obiora C-Ik Ofoedu was arrested in the course of "Operation Spring". Initially, Ofoedu was traded as a drug lord based on police information given to the media . Charles Ofoedu was part of the platform for a world without racism . After being released from custody for three months, he continued to work on the platform. Ofoedu was finally convicted of money laundering in 2000 - he had transferred money for compatriots that, according to the court ruling, came from drug trafficking. The public prosecutor's office did not bring charges or were acquitted of allegations for any of the other crimes he was originally charged with and was subsequently detained for three months after the Aliens Police had imposed a 10-year residence ban. He processed his experiences with the Austrian judiciary in the book "Dawn". The judiciary had to drop the accusation that Ofoedu was the head of an international drug ring. Immediately after his arrest, the opinion prevailed on the platform that he should be made a "drug boss" for political reasons.

Emmanuel Chukwujekwu

Chukwujekwu was also presented in 1999 as a "drug boss". After he was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment in the first instance, he was acquitted in the second instance. Chukwujekwu's lawyer was Lennart Binder . However, the Supreme Court overturned the judgments and the case was again referred to the first instance. At the end of December 2005, after spending nearly 4 years and 9 months in custody, Chukwujekwu was sentenced to exactly 4 years and 9 months in prison in the first instance. According to the court, Chukwujekwu could now be convicted of a "drug packer". This judgment is not final as an annulment complaint has been lodged.

Comments on the Operation Spring processes

Emmanuel Chukwujekwu in the March 2004 issue of Augustin : “It was not a war on drugs, it was a war against the black community in Vienna […]. It is unimaginable that something like this could happen in a civilized country like Austria. "
Peter Pilz (former member of the Austrian National Council, Greens ) on December 30, 2005 on his homepage: “I suspect that the 'evidence' of Operation Spring was used to convict the guilty and the innocent. […] A similar trial against Russian mafiosi would have ended in a fiasco. [...] top international lawyers would have torn up the 'evidence' in the air. The police and the public prosecutor would have perished in a swamp of ridiculousness. The bunglers of the Austrian constitutional state would have received a devastating lesson. "
Max Edelbacher , chief detective, summed up operation Spring: “The methods used were not successful [...]. The result is not of lasting value. Major drug lords could not be arrested. […] Nowadays the police have a different strategy and concentrate on tracking down the small street vendors. "
Karin Gastinger (Minister of Justice) in the answer to a parliamentary question on December 8, 2005, BMJ-Pr7000 / 0088-Pr 1/2005: “It was a purely legal assessment of the grievances and inconsistencies shown in the film […]. The documentary was judged ambivalent by all those present. If the results of the proceedings are based on incorrect translations and testimony, this naturally raises doubts as to whether the legal finding was correct. On the other hand, it is a shortcoming of this documentation that the security and prosecution authorities did not have their say in order to achieve a balanced presentation. [...] Instructions from the Federal Ministry of Justice only come into question in the case of controversial standpoints which, however, do not exist in the area of the procedural complex in question. "

Movie

Angelika Schuster and Tristan Sindelgruber produced a documentary film with the same name "Operation Spring" about the police operation , the court proceedings and the background to the proceedings. The film asks whether the defendants ever had a chance at a fair trial. The premiere was on September 23, 2005 in cinemas in Vienna and Graz . On April 13, 2008, the ORF broadcast this documentary in its Doc.Art series - but not during prime time, but only at 11 p.m.

literature

Association for anti-racist public relations / society for human rights of marginalized and migrants: 1000 years imprisonment - Operation Spring and institutional racism. Summary of an anti-racist group . 2005 ISBN 3-200-00374-X
Obiora Ofoedu: Dawn . Almond tree, 2000, ISBN 3-85476-033-7

swell

↑ OPERATION SPRING on tv.ORF.at

Web links

Media reports

[1] OPERATION SPRING on tv.ORF.at