The Berlin public prosecutor’s office has admitted to the star a serious investigative error. Contrary to earlier statements, the fugitive right-wing extremist Attila Hildmann does not have Turkish citizenship. “The investigations are ongoing and according to local knowledge, the accused only has German nationality,” said a spokesman for the Berlin Attorney General’s Office. This means that the former vegan celebrity chef and wanted hate speech could be extradited from Turkey.
Hildmann has been on the run since December 2020 and has been hiding in Turkey ever since. He has been wanted by the Berlin public prosecutor’s office since February 2021 and is on the wanted lists of Europol and Interpol. He is accused of, among other things, incitement to hatred, use of symbols of unconstitutional or terrorist organizations and insults.
Nevertheless, Germany had apparently not tried to have Hildmann extradited by Turkey. Because the Berlin public prosecutor’s office claimed that Hildmann had Turkish citizenship in addition to German citizenship. It is therefore pointless to submit an extradition request to Turkey, Turkey does not extradite Turkish citizens.
The spokesman for the authorities initially did not want to comment on how the embarrassing error of the Berlin public prosecutor’s office could have come about. After fleeing to Turkey in early 2021, Hildmann himself had spread the information that he had dual citizenship. The Attorney General declared Hildmann’s allegation a fact in March 2021. The authority wrote on Twitter at the time: “The accused has Turkish citizenship in addition to German.”
Since then there have been repeated doubts about this claim. After the public prosecutor’s office stoically repeated this statement to media inquiries for more than a year, they changed their tone for the first time in June of this year. At that time, the spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office said that he would now be checked whether Hildmann really had Turkish citizenship. The investigators approached the Turkish authorities.
So is Hildmann going to jail in Germany after all? Has the federal government made an extradition request to Turkey? There is still no official answer to this. Neither the Berlin public prosecutor’s office nor the Federal Office of Justice, the Federal Ministry of the Interior or the Foreign Office wanted to comment on the status of the talks with Turkey to stern up to the editorial deadline.
The investigative error related to citizenship is just one of many omissions by the authorities in the Hildmann case. In several cases, judicial staff are said to have provided Hildmann with internal information in the past. A former employee of the Berlin judiciary has therefore been under investigation for months. The employees of the IT department of the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office, who have since been fired without notice, are accused of violating official secrecy and attempting to frustrate criminal prosecution.
