On the second day of the trial against Jérôme Boateng, there was an incident between his security service and a witness who was supposed to testify against him. The public prosecutor’s office then not only initiates proceedings, but also has several of the company’s properties searched.
In a large-scale raid, the Munich I public prosecutor’s office searched the building of the security company that Jérôme Boateng had hired to protect him in court. The van that Boateng was driven to his trial was also searched in front of the courthouse, according to public prosecutor Anne Leiding.
The investigations are not aimed at Boateng, she emphasized, but at four employees of the security service he has commissioned. In addition to the car in front of the Munich court, other objects in Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Brandenburg were also searched. The objects that the public prosecutor was looking for were also secured. According to Leiding, the head of the security company was questioned. From now on, the company is no longer responsible for protecting Boateng in court, that is now a matter for the judicial officer.
The background to the investigation is an incident with the security service on the second day of the trial almost two weeks ago. A witness stated in the proceedings that she had been filmed entering the courthouse and felt threatened. Law enforcement officials then determined the personal details of the people allegedly involved in the incident.
The woman, who said in court that she had seen Boateng attack, hit and insult her former girlfriend on a Caribbean vacation, burst into tears on the witness stand. “You’re just afraid,” she said, “that you’ll be threatened or your family will be threatened.” After determining the personal details, Boateng’s lawyers emphasized that the security service, which had already looked after Boateng at the start of the trial the day before, had only “determined the environment” in order to be able to assess “Boateng’s security situation”. It was a matter of pure “object clarification” and the witness was not specifically filmed and was only filmed from behind.
The public prosecutor’s office initiated proceedings on suspicion of violation of the most personal sphere of life through image recordings. Customs and the labor inspectorate are also involved in this, and this is completely independent of the personal injury proceedings against Boateng, said Leiding. However, she also emphasized that no witness should be afraid to testify in court.
