uIn order to prevent crimes by radical climate activists, Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) has announced that he will take people from such groups into preventive detention in the future. This primarily refers to the “Last Generation” group – but not only. On Monday, the Minister of the Interior specified the plans in Wiesbaden and said that it was expressly not about taking action against legitimate protests, “but about crimes”. If this threatens and massively affects the safety of citizens, he will exhaust the legal options available in Hesse.
In Hesse, it is therefore possible to take people into preventive detention for up to six days with a court order. That has also happened in the past.
Beuth refers to the climate protests of the “last generation” in April of this year. Between April 11 and April 26, several activists occupied important traffic junctions in downtown Frankfurt and sometimes stuck their hands on the streets. It took the police hours to get the activists off the streets. Especially in the morning rush hour, the cars backed up on the streets. There was massive disruption.
Could it hit the occupiers of the Fechenheimer forest?
Beuth did not rule out that there could be similar blockades at Frankfurt Airport as in Berlin. He spoke of “drastic restrictions” associated with it. Last but not least, it is a dangerous intervention in air traffic. On Monday, too, he made it clear that a central goal of preventive detention is to protect citizens from the dangers that illegal actions would cause.
Beuth left it open which groups other than the “last generation” could be affected by such preventive detention. For example, whether the occupiers of the Fechenheimer forest in Frankfurt, who are currently demonstrating against the clearing of a piece of forest for the planned Riederwald tunnel, were included. There are fears within the security authorities that sooner or later it could be a scene similar to that in the Dannenröder forest. A large number of people were arrested there during the eviction. Beuth said preventive detention would be used wherever the legal basis permitted.
“New phenomenon with further radicalization potential”
A few weeks ago, the Hessian Minister of Justice Roman Poseck (CDU) also announced a tougher course against radical climate activists. He spoke of a “new phenomenon with further potential for radicalization” in which it was necessary and right to “discuss increased penalties”.
The actions of the climate activists “Last Generation” have “reached a dimension that requires consistent action by the state,” Poseck continued. He referred to blockages “that affect countless people” and cause life-threatening situations, for example, if escape routes are affected. He sees “offences from coercion to resistance against emergency services to, under certain circumstances, terrorist offenses” that could be attributed to such groups.
