Staschinsky case
As Stashinsky case became known decision of the German Federal Supreme Court ( BGHSt 18, 87) looked at the example of the murder of the KGB -Agenten Bogdan Nikolaevich Stashinsky (born November 4, 1931 Russian Богдан Николаевич Сташинский , Ukrainian Богдан Миколайович Сташинський / Bohdan Mykolajowytsch Staschynskyj ) with the problem of the demarcation between perpetration and participation in criminal law .
Stashinsky, the KGB in the Department of acts of terrorism was employed abroad, was established in 1957 with the order , from the top leadership of the Soviet Union as disturbing felt exiled politicians, leading members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Russian national federation of professionals to liquidate, , ordered to Berlin . As commissioned, he murdered Lew Rebet from the “national union” in the fall of 1957 and Stepan Bandera , the chairman of the OUN, in Munich in the summer of 1959 . As a murder weapon, he used a pistol-like object to spray hydrogen cyanide gas , which he insidiously applied directly to the face of his victims . Five days before the Berlin Wall was built , he fled to West Berlin with his German wife and was taken into custody on September 1, 1961.
In order to be able to condemn Staschinski, who seemed almost certain of a life imprisonment , to a shorter sentence, the German judiciary tried to remedy the situation with a contrivance : In order to enable a reduction in the sentence provided by law for assistants in an act , Staschinski declared in his trial in 1962 to a mere assistant who on the spot - in his crimes committed in Germany - actually only assisted the actual perpetrator - the head of the KGB in Moscow - in his two murders and therefore sentenced him to a prison sentence of only eight years. The judgment of the regional court was confirmed by the Federal Court of Justice, which used the catchy formula: "The perpetrator is whoever wants the deed as his own " and thus argued that Staschinski wanted his deeds to be strange , namely as deeds of the KGB chief and instead of "the will of the perpetrator "Had only" willingness to assist ". This construction of the Federal Court of Justice, known as the animus theory , has never been completely abandoned, but is no longer represented in this form. It must have been decisive that with this ruling at the height of the Cold War , the courts wanted to send a signal to foreign intelligence officials at all levels of the hierarchy as to who should expect what consequences in such acts.
To judgments as that of the Supreme Court in Stashinsky case possible to prevent that has lawmakers in 1969 in § 25 para. 1 of the Criminal Code (in force since 1 January 1975) with the formulation: "the perpetrators will be punished, whoever the offense itself or by commits another “tries to make it clear that anyone who realizes all of the elements of the offense in person - at least in principle, since this had not been legally clarified for participants in firing squads at least at the time of the new version of the law - should also be regarded as a perpetrator. This was intended to counter the tendency in the case law, which is indicated in this case, to devalue self-realization of the offense with reference to the alleged lack of perpetrator will to mere participation with the consequence of mandatory mitigation of punishment according to § 27 Abs. 2 in conjunction with § 49 Abs. 1 StGB. According to the prevailing case law today, only in “extreme exceptional cases” someone who - like Staschinski - fulfills all the objective criteria himself should be treated as an assistant.
Until 2005 it was assumed that Staschinski had been living under a new identity in Germany since his release from prison. In 2005 the book How much does it cost to betray one's homeland? The book describes how Staschinski obtained his new identity with American help and has allegedly lived in the United States since his release . The book also claims that the KGB has since rejected "murder as a common means of attaining political ends outside the socialist camp".
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ BGH, judgment of October 19, 1962 , Az. 9 StE 4/62, full text.
- ↑ Ernst Reuss: Murder? Homicide? Or what? 1st edition. Militzke Verlag, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-86189-868-9 , pp. 23 ff .
- ↑ BGH NJW 93, 74 ff.
- ↑ DP Prokhorov (Д. П. Прохоров): Сколько стоит продать родину? Saint Petersburg / Moscow, 2005, ISBN 5-7654-4469-5 .
