Wolfgang Kaleck

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wolfgang Kaleck (2017)

Wolfgang Kaleck (born August 13, 1960 ) is a German lawyer . He is a specialist lawyer for criminal law with a focus on European and international criminal law and human rights . In 2007 he and other lawyers founded the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) , a non-profit and independent human rights organization based in Berlin, of which he has been Secretary General since then. According to Kaleck, the New York Center for Constitutional Rights was the model for founding the ECCHR . Kaleck had got to know the work of the non-profit organization based in New York , which campaigns for basic and human rights, while traveling to the USA since 2004. Kaleck became known to a wider public because he represented the whistleblower Edward Snowden as a lawyer.

Life

Kaleck grew up in Jülich near Aachen . His parents are both refugees, his mother from Romanian Transylvania, his father from Königsberg .

Legal activity

After studying law in Bonn , Wolfgang Kaleck completed part of his legal clerkship in Guatemala in 1990 , where he worked for the human rights commission Comisión de Derechos Humanos de Guatemala . Here the Spanish-speaking Kaleck came into contact with local people who had lost relatives through acts of violence and torture. "My country became foreign to me there." Back in Germany, he and a partner founded a law firm in the Berlin House of Democracy and Human Rights in 1991 , which is now located in Prenzlauer Berg . At the beginning of 2014, another law firm became part of the law firm " dka Rechtsanwälte / Fachanwälte “merged. He was also federal chairman of the Republican Lawyers Association. V. (RAV).

The focus of his legal work is on mandates related to human and civil rights. At first, Kaleck represented GDR civil rights activists who wanted to see their Stasi files, and later also victims of right-wing violent crimes. Since 1998, the lawyer has been working as part of the Coalition Against Impunity to bring the Argentine military in Germany to justice for the murder and torture of German victims of the military dictatorship there (1976–1983) . Kaleck filed a criminal complaint against a manager of Mercedes-Benz Argentina for aiding and abetting the murder of a trade unionist.

Kaleck sees his work and that of ECCHR not only as legal. He wants to use criminal charges to draw attention to human rights violations around the world and, ideally, contribute to a more comprehensive global enforcement of human rights. For Kaleck this is "a historical process." You work up facts on a respective case of human rights violations, make them public with a criminal complaint or a process and thereby set "legal thoughts into the world".

Criminal charges against Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet

On November 14, 2006, Wolfgang Kaleck filed a complaint with the Attorney General in Karlsruhe on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of eleven former Iraqi prisoners of the US armed forces and a Saudi citizen still incarcerated in Guantánamo . This measure made public a stir, because it against the then US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA boss George Tenet as well as to other senior Pentagon was directed -Führungskräfte. Kaleck accused them of having committed war crimes and serious human rights violations against the prisoners in Abu Ghraib . Donald Rumsfeld wanted to cancel his participation in the Munich Security Conference due to a possible criminal prosecution in Germany . However, the complaint was rejected two days before the conference by Attorney General Kay Nehm , so that Rumsfeld could begin his journey to Munich unmolested. Thereupon UN Special Rapporteur Leandro Despouy complained about the lack of independence of the German judiciary.

Criminal charges against Gina Haspel

In 2017, Kaleck filed a criminal complaint with the German attorney general against the deputy CIA director Gina Haspel for her involvement in torture in Thailand.

Journalistic work

In addition to his work as a lawyer, Wolfgang Kaleck works as a book author. He also wrote a week since May 2014, a blog on human rights entitled Legal subversive at time online ; the blog “paused” since July 2016.

Awards

Kaleck is a member of the PEN Center Germany . His commitment to the victims of state violence was honored with the Hermann Kesten Prize in 2014 .

Fonts

  • Wolfgang Kaleck: Fight against impunity. Argentina's military on trial. Wagenbach, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-8031-2646-7 .
  • Wolfgang Kaleck: With two standards: the West and international criminal law. Wagenbach, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-8031-3642-8 .
  • Wolfgang Kaleck: Rightly against power. Our global fight for human rights. Hanser, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-446-24944-8
  • (together with Miriam Saage-Maaß): Company before court. Global struggles for human rights. Wagenbach, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-8031-2748-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Staff - ECCHR - EUROPEAN CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS (de). In: www.ecchr.eu. Retrieved February 19, 2016 .
  2. ↑ oral history interview with Wolfgang Kaleck. In: Sources on the history of human rights. Working Group Human Rights in the 20th Century, October 15, 2013, accessed on January 3, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel - Interview with the Berlin whistleblower's lawyer , from February 8, 2014
  4. ↑ Eberhard Schade, courageous defender of human rights . Deutschlandfunk Kultur, November 13, 2014
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Kaleck - dka. In: www.dka-kanzlei.de. Retrieved February 19, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Die Zeit - One against Rumsfeld , No. 46 of November 9, 2006, page 17 ff.
  7. ↑ About us. Website of the law firm dka, accessed on November 27, 2015
  8. ↑ cf. http://www.menschenrechte.org
  9. ↑ Daimler Chrysler Argentina forwarding .
  10. ↑ oral history interview with Wolfgang Kaleck. In: Sources on the history of human rights. Working Group Human Rights in the 20th Century, October 15, 2013, accessed on December 16, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Projects> Rumsfeld criminal complaint | Republican Lawyers' Association (RAV). In: www.rav.de. Retrieved May 3, 2016 .
  12. ↑ ZEIT ONLINE GmbH, Hamburg, Germany: How was that ?: Why did you report Donald Rumsfeld? . In: ZEIT ONLINE . December 31, 2004.
  13. ^ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg, Germany: Lawsuit against Rumsfeld: UN reporter criticizes federal prosecutor's office . In: SPIEGEL ONLINE . June 14, 2007.
  14. ↑ Gina Haspel - allegations of torture against new CIA boss - "personnel decision is a catastrophe" . In: Deutschlandfunk . March 13, 2018 ( deutschlandfunk.de [accessed March 20, 2018]).
  15. ↑ Trump's New CIA Nominee, Gina Haspel, Faces Possible Arrest Warrant in Germany over Torture . In: Democracy Now! March 14, 2018 (English, democracynow.org [accessed March 20, 2018] Kaleck's interview with Amy Goodman).
personal data
SURNAME Kaleck, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1960