Austrian justice under heavy scrutiny as Julian Hessenthaler trial opens

Epicenter.works and Amnesty Austria were present at the Regional Court in St. Pölten last week to monitor the trial of Julian Hessenthaler, which opened on Wednesday 8 September. Private detective and journalistic source Hessenthaler is a key figure in the production of the Ibizagate affair, which exposed high level corruption and brought down Austria's far right coalition government in 2019.

Thanks to the media attention around the open letter signed by Blueprint for Free Speech and many other civil society organisations, which was reported in 11 countries, the courtroom was full as the trial opened, with a significant degree of interest from local and international press.

The six-hour hearing opened with Hessenthaler pleading not guilty and providing his own testimony to the court. This was followed with an examination of the two main prosecution witnesses, one of whom was unable to continue without an interpreter. This testimony is expected to continue at the next hearing of 13 October, along with others that the defence argue show contradictions in the prosecution case.

German human rights lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck, who was also in court, has written a highly critical account of what he observed for Der Spiegel.

In his article, Kaleck describes an investigative process that is closer to government, and a legal culture that is considerably more deferential to the prosecution, than he would expect in Germany. He suggests that this degree of deference raises questions about the appropriateness of Germany allowing Hessenthaler to be extensively surveilled, and then extradited from Germany at the beginning of the year:

"European cooperation in the prosecution of criminal offenses works with the fiction that good neighbors comply with all constitutional standards, so you don't have to look too closely. The German judiciary willingly waved dozens of European investigative orders through to allow radio cell interception of the area around Hessenthaler's Berlin lawyer’s office. As a result, extradition to Austria is no longer a contested issue. The wording is now "transfer" and the basis of a European arrest warrant is no longer checked for political persecution."