Peter Paul Rainer (politician)

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Peter Paul Rainer (born July 20, 1967 in Bolzano ) is a former South Tyrolean politician . In 1997 he was sentenced to 22 years and six months in prison for the murder of his political companion Christian Waldner . In mid-2013 he was released early from prison for good conduct.

Life

From 1985 to 1992 Rainer was a functionary of the ruling South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP), from 1989 to 1992 political director of the SVP youth organization Young Generation and a member of the party committee. Together with Stephan Gutweniger, Pius Leitner and Christian Waldner , who had taken the lead in the young generation and in the South Tyrolean Schützenbund , he tried unsuccessfully to bring the SVP to a decidedly (German) national line that ultimately separated South Tyrol from the Italian State should propagate. In 1988 he was personal advisor to the President of the Regional Council Trentino-South Tyrol Luis Zingerle and the organizer of the campaign “Package deal, not like this”.

Rainer was an opponent of the conclusion of the South Tyrolean autonomy negotiations with Italy and the submission of the declaration of dispute settlement to the United Nations and therefore resigned from the South Tyrolean People's Party in 1992. In the same year, as chairman of a promoters' committee, he supported the founding of the party Die Freiheitlichen as the South Tyrolean sister party of the Austrian FPÖ , without assuming a party function himself.

In 1994 he was appointed educational and cultural advisor in the South Tyrolean Schützenbund and a member of the federal management. At the same time he also wrote several articles, which appeared in 1994/95 in the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit , an activity which he resumed during his imprisonment in Trento prison. In 1996 he received his doctorate from the University of Innsbruck with a dissertation on toponomastics in South Tyrol .

In January 2015 he appeared publicly at a Pegida event in Linz .

Murder and trials

On February 17, 1997, the former leader of the Freedom Party, Christian Waldner, who had been expelled from the party in 1995, was found murdered by five shots at the Reichrieglerhof . February 15 was later set as the likely date of death. Peter Paul Rainer was arrested five days after the murder. Since the public prosecutor's office was able to prove that Rainer had a fake alibi, he confessed to the act at the first interrogation - still without legal counsel. The next day, he informed his close family members that he was innocent. On the same day, Rainer led the police to his Norinco hunting rifle, which was hidden in the forest near Sigmundskron , which - according to the Bolzano public prosecutor's office - was the murder weapon. Shortly afterwards, in a television interview of the third program of the RAI station, which was unique in Italian legal history and which took place at his request, he again confirmed that he had murdered Christian Waldner. The reason given by Rainer was that he had faked his high school diploma . Rainer had been able to study history in Innsbruck thanks to a university entrance qualification, but the title he had obtained in this way was not recognized in Italy. Therefore, Rainer subsequently falsified a high school diploma in order to achieve recognition of his degree. Waldner knew about the forgery and blackmailed him with it - said Rainer. After his first conviction, Rainer made up his Matura in prison in Trento.

At the beginning of the trial at the Bolzano Regional Court , Rainer revoked his confession and protested his innocence. On August 11, 1997, Rainer was sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder and two and a half years in prison for illegal possession of weapons, whereby the fact that Christian Waldner was blackmailed was recognized as an attenuating circumstance. In the second instance, however, the Higher Regional Court of Trento acquitted Rainer on December 2, 1998 “on the grounds of proven innocence” and immediately released him. During the trial in Trento, a death threat directed against the presiding judge on behalf of the terrorist organization Ein Tirol, which was active in the 1980s, as well as a fake dossier sent to him by the Italian military secret service SISMI , which was supposed to exonerate Rainer and put the murder victim in contact with organized crime in Eastern Europe , for excitement. In November 1999 the Court of Cassation in Rome ordered a retrial at the Brescia Higher Regional Court following a complaint from the Bolzano public prosecutor.

On May 20, 2000, the Brescia Higher Regional Court upheld the first instance guilty verdict of the Bolzano Regional Court “on the basis of the evidence, because of the confessions that revealed details that only the perpetrator could know, and because of a proven motive”. When the verdict was issued, Rainer could not be found. Until then, Rainer had worked under a pseudonym for the Christian radio station Horeb in Balderschwang in Oberallgäu. For this reason, the court of Brescia issued an international arrest warrant against Rainer after the verdict was pronounced "for risk of escape and repetition" and because Rainer had continued contact with "ultra-national, extremist circles abroad" who could hide him.

After almost eight months of searching by Interpol , Rainer was arrested on January 4, 2001 by the Austrian police in Vienna-Rudolfsheim . In the meantime, the Court of Cassation in Rome had upheld the new guilty verdict in Brescia. Rainer was therefore extradited to Italy on December 28, 2001, despite the efforts of his legal advisor, the former Austrian Justice Minister Harald Ofner , since on October 9, 2001 the Vienna Higher Regional Court, which was involved in the extradition proceedings, ruled that “immediate evidence of the complete impossibility of his perpetration “Is not given. He has since served his sentence in Padua Prison . In 2005, the Venice Higher Regional Court dismissed Rainer's motion to retrial. At the beginning of 2007, the court of cassation in Rome ordered the retrial because the defense was able to summon three new witnesses. This - now eighth - legal proceedings in the Waldner murder case were heard at the Trieste Higher Regional Court. On October 20, 2008, the court ruled that Peter Paul Rainer was imprisoned for murder at 20 years and six months because, according to the verdict, the three new witnesses were not credible. Because of his good conduct, Rainer was able to work during the day towards the end of his prison term ; he was released early from prison in mid-2013.

conspiracy theories

The case itself, reinforced by the unusual course of the police investigation and the dubious contacts of both the victim and Rainer in the secret service environment, gave rise to a whole range of conspiracy theories. Media in at least four countries (Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland) reported on the case for years.
Waldner and Rainer were involved in founding the party Die Freiheitlichen in 1992 . Waldner was chairman of the party, but was voted out of office in 1994 and expelled from the party in 1995 because of “financial irregularities”. Waldner retained his mandate in the South Tyrolean state parliament and approached the Lega Nord before his death . The politician Carlo Palermo explained in court that Waldner had a dossier with which "the illegal financing of a South Tyrolean party could have been proven". This dossier was never found. The prosecution practically closed the investigation after Rainer's confession and the discovery of his hunting rifle. So was z. B. Rainer's rifle is no longer examined for fingerprints. This negligence on the part of the investigators and the contacts of the victim and the perpetrator with right-wing extremist circles and with Italian and Austrian secret services, as revealed by the press, led to four parliamentary questions in the Austrian parliament:

The South Tyrolean journalist Artur Oberhofer wrote two books on the case: The Waldner murder case , in which he tried to prove Rainer's innocence, and three years later the Waldner murder case - The New Facts , in which Oberhofer analyzed all inconsistencies in Rainer's behavior, especially after the acquittal of Trento.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FF
  2. ^ Günther Pallaver : The historical development of the political parties in South Tyrol ( Memento from November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) . In: Giuseppe Ferrandi, Günther Pallaver (ed.), La Regione Trentino-Alto Adige / Südtirol nel XX secolo. I. Politica e Istituzioni (Borders / Confini 4/1) . Trento, Museo Storico in Trento, pp. 591–630.
  3. ↑ Dolomites, life data ( Memento from October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ z. B. Junge Freiheit , [25/98 June 12, 1998, p. 7]
  5. ↑ Dissertation by Peter Paul Rainer (University of Innsbruck, 1996)
  6. ^ Peter Paul Rainer publicly again, Tiroler Tageszeitung, March 23, 2015.
  7. ↑ Dolomites, proceedings OLG Brescia ( Memento from October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ jf-archiv.de
  9. ↑ Dolomites, grounds for judgment Brescia ( Memento of October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ^ Radio Horeb and the Waldner murder case . In: The world
  11. ↑ jf-archiv.de
  12. ^ Dolomites, Peter Paul Rainer arrested in Vienna ( Memento from October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ diepresse.com
  14. ↑ jf-archiv.de
  15. ^ Proceedings OLG Vienna In: Die Presse
  16. ↑ The spy who came from South Tyrol . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 10, 2001; delivery
  17. ^ ORF proceedings OLG Venice ( Memento from August 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ↑ Dolomites, proceedings OLG Triest ( Memento from October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ trieste.rvnet.eu ( Memento from October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ stol.it ( Memento from February 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Dolomites, all three witnesses unbelievable.
  21. ↑ A mysterious murder lets conspiracy theories flourish . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 29, 1998.
  22. ↑ [1]
  23. ↑ [2]
  24. ↑ [3]
  25. ↑ [4]
personal data
SURNAME Rainer, Peter Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian politician (South Tyrol)
DATE OF BIRTH 20th July 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Bolzano