After the allegations against the LKA executives Alexandra Klein and Mirko Streiber, star attorney Gerhard Strate also exerts severe criticism: They had his mandate, ex- “Cold Cases” manager Steven Baack, after an acquittal in a murder case with unfair means – The dismissal, he makes it clear in the MOPO interview, would also have an impact on the current investigative work.
MOPO: You claim that the LKA reproduced untruths in clarifying Baack’s dismissal – why?
Strate: My client submitted numerous requests for evidence and pointed out witnesses who had exonerated, none of which were heard. Despite the knowledge of rebuttable allegations, these were submitted to the public prosecutor’s office by Mirko Streiber, today LKA boss, with an untruthful tendency to burden. Likewise, exonerating information from my client was not passed on.
Is it correct that both your client and the head of the LKA came to your office for a discussion on December 18, 2018?
Yes. The meeting lasted a little over three hours. Mr. Streiber was sitting right next to Steven Baack. Representations of my client were not recorded. Neither in writing nor on tape. At the end of the meeting, Streiber informed us that the allegations were “toothless” and that “nothing was left of them.”
You might also be interested in: Defamation, coercion: criminal charges against LKA executives
And did Streiber not mention this meeting in his communication to the public prosecutor’s office?
Yes, in the report, contrary to his personal statements in my office, he repeated all allegations and also untruthfully stated that there had been no contact with my client yet. Steven Baack had not yet opened the allegations. That was a falsehood at the time. And an absolutely unfair approach.
Do you believe that the current situation and the recall of your client slowed down the investigation of the “cold cases” and that therefore cases such as Hilal could not be continued or even brought to a conclusion?
Definitely. In the two years that my client worked as a “cold cases” manager, he and his colleagues designed a completely new system for handling such cases and was in close contact with numerous detectives from other federal states, the Netherlands and the FBI. However, the LKA management did not comply with his repeated references to urgently necessary personal support in up to 21 cases that were being carried out simultaneously with new, promising approaches.
What did this new bakery system look like?
He recognized glaring deficiencies in the processing of missing persons and aggressively went about troubleshooting by proposing a concept for a central, systematic processing with the involvement of many police officers. My client discovered systemic errors in the practice at the time, which made it virtually impossible for many hard-working colleagues before him to search for long-term missing persons and to recognize crimes, i.e. homicides, in the first place. Baack and his unit quickly achieved success, after the decision of the public prosecutor’s office they resolved several allegedly unsolvable cases of missing and killed people. After his recall, however, it became quiet. Very quiet.
So has something changed for you?
The explanations are missing. Innovations too. And we also notice that: Relatives of people who have been killed are actually still reporting to him and also to me as his lawyer, complaining bitterly: They feel left alone again. And at least from the point of view of the LKA management, which bears responsibility here, they probably are too.
–
