The committee of inquiry into sexual harassment by the police and allegations against the Home Secretary is taking shape. At the beginning there is a debate about how secret the whole investigation should be.
Heidelberg (dpa / lsw) – The parliamentary groups in the state parliament have agreed on an initial timetable for the committee of inquiry into the affair surrounding Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU), among other things. According to a decision made on Wednesday, Strobl is to be asked personally in the first public meeting on September 23, among other things, about the affair about a letter he passed on from a lawyer. Strobl is said to be the only witness that day. The state government’s report for the committee should also go to the MPs on July 27th. The files from the Ministry of the Interior alone are said to have a volume of 70,000 pages.
Background are investigations against the highest-ranking police officer in the country, the inspector of police. He’s suspended from duty. The man is said to have sexually harassed a colleague. Strobl is indirectly under pressure because of the matter – he forwarded a letter from the inspector’s lawyer to a journalist. The public prosecutor’s office is therefore also investigating against him. The opposition demands Strobl’s resignation.
On Wednesday, the committee first dealt with the question of how much of the clarification should take place in secret, how much of the files should be blacked out, how many meetings should be open to the public. The opposition objected to a proposal by committee chair Daniela Evers (Greens) to hold as many meetings as possible behind closed doors. The Ministry of the Interior saw the personal rights of the officials concerned at risk because the committee is also supposed to deal with the police’s promotion practice.
After the meeting, the opposition spoke of a tense mood, and the committee chairman had been accused of lacking neutrality. Evers defended her actions. She sees her work in making non-binding proposals, she told the dpa. Parliament can then make sovereign decisions. That also happened: The corresponding point was deleted in the committee at the request of the SPD, only the CDU abstained.
“We have made sure that the sub-committee remains a sub-committee and does not degenerate into a debating club,” said SPD domestic politician Sascha Binder of the German Press Agency. Now all the objects of investigation could be treated equally, including those relating to appointments and promotions in the police force.
In the end, after an intensive debate, it was decided “to follow the security precautions of previous committees of inquiry,” said the state parliament. The committee also followed the SPD’s proposal to appoint two investigators. According to Binder, they should take care of the issue of sexual harassment in state authorities, another focus of the committee. “Today it was shown that we are a very open, self-confident body and I look forward to working together,” emphasized Chair Evers.
