Can terrorism be checked without curbing civil rights?
Quiet, thin, dressed in a conservative pinstriped suit, Kurt Groenewold hardly looks the part of a firebrand lawyer who would conspire with West German terrorists to bring down the state. But Groenewold is now on trial himself in a Hamburg courtroom for "supporting a criminal organization" and furthering the plots of the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang, which has wreaked havoc in West Germany for a decade. As Groenewold nervously shuffles papers, his own lawyer politely debates procedural points with the prosecutors. No one shouts obscenities; the tone is orderly and low-key, punctuated only by an occasional muffled cheer from a handful of law students sitting in the audience on the other side of a bulletproof screen.
Despite the subdued atmosphere of the State High Court, the stakes at the trial are high. If Groenewold is acquitted, the German effort to keep radical lawyers from helping their terrorist clients commit crimes will have suffered a serious blow. If Groenewold is convicted, the right of the accused to full representation by an attorney could be dangerously undermined. To anxious observers, it comes down to a difficult test case of Germany's precarious balance between the rights of the individual and the security of the state—an issue with echoes far beyond Germany.
Three years ago, Groenewold, now 40, and two other radical lawyers, Klaus Croissant, 48, and Hans-Christian Ströbele, 38, were expelled by the court from the trial of the four "hardcore" Baader-Meinhof leaders on the "urgent suspicion" that they had collaborated with their clients to frustrate justice and commit further criminal acts. They were charged with creating an "information system" among the imprisoned terrorists and their adherents on the outside, and with coordinating a prison hunger strike. The information they were said to have passed to their jailed clients included treatises on guerrilla warfare, instructions on weapons systems and diagrams of U.S. military bases in West Germany. Croissant was further accused of helping Andreas Baader escape an arrest warrant and bullying an imprisoned gang member into joining the hunger strike.
This winter the government put Groenewold and Croissant on trial for their defense tactics. Strobele may also face prosecution, along with a dozen other radical lawyers, on various charges. Croissant's trial, in the Stuttgart court where the Baader gang leaders were convicted last spring, is likely to be less restrained than Groenewold's. Croissant is more given to outbursts than his colleague, and his lawyers delayed the trial soon after it began by refusing to unzip their trousers so that guards could inspect their underwear for weapons. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled early this month that the searches were legal, and the trial resumed last week.