Pressure on Minister Strobl is growing
Investigators searched the Stuttgart Ministry of the Interior
May 6th, 2022, 9:09 p.m
Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of the Interior Strobl is said to have passed on information from a procedure against a police officer for sexual harassment to a journalist. Both are now being investigated and the Ministry is being searched. Strobl has to take a lot of criticism, especially from the police.
Two days after the start of investigations into Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of the Interior, Thomas Strobl, for passing on a lawyer’s letter to the press, the public prosecutor’s office searched the ministry and confiscated documents. The prosecution announced that “search measures had been carried out and evidence secured”. The ministry was “cooperative” and released the documents voluntarily. The ministry said it had given the prosecution “full and immediate information.” They rely on “maximum cooperation with the public prosecutor’s office”. The 62-year-old Strobl is under massive pressure because of the affair, and the opposition is demanding his resignation.
What is the case? The public prosecutor’s office has been investigating suspected sexual harassment against a leading police officer since November. The man is said to have harassed a chief inspector in a video chat with his ideas about sexual practices. Because Strobl passed on a letter from the accused officer’s lawyer to a journalist, he is now also under investigation.
The minister said on Wednesday that he had launched the letter himself in order to show “maximum transparency”. The public prosecutor’s office then stated that the investigation was directed against the journalist and the minister. The reporter is suspected of having quoted official documents from the ongoing proceedings against the police officer. Strobl, in turn, is said to have instigated him to do so. The ministry announced on Friday evening that the public prosecutor’s office was examining the facts and taking the necessary investigative steps. In view of the ongoing proceedings of the public prosecutor’s office, the department is currently unable to comment further on this in public.
Strobl has not yet commented on the investigation. The CDU state leader is not going to the district party conference of the CDU North Württemberg in Waiblingen this Saturday, although it was announced in the program. Instead, there is a recorded greeting via video, said a spokeswoman for the state CDU.
The presumption of innocence also applies in the Ministry of the Interior
The German police union had previously sharply criticized Strobl’s behavior. “If Interior Minister Strobl were a police officer, the Interior Ministry would have suspended him and they would have issued a press release that would have made it very difficult to return,” said Ralf Kusterer, head of the country. In view of the opposition’s demands for his resignation, the trade unionist explained that he “understood the political assessments in the Strobl case”.
Kusterer welcomed the criminal investigations against the Minister of the Interior for passing on to the press a letter from the accused official’s lawyer. One could get the impression “that the presumption of innocence does not apply in the Ministry of the Interior”. Kusterer said: “The loss of trust in the police, but also among the citizens, is difficult.” He pleaded for withdrawing the disciplinary proceedings against the senior civil servant from the Ministry of the Interior and transferring it to the Ministry of State.
The opposition sees Kusterer’s statements as a no-confidence vote by the police against the minister. SPD faction leader Andreas Stoch recalled a legendary saying by ex-Federal Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who is also Strobl’s father-in-law: “Wolfgang Schäuble would know what hit it: Isch Over,” Stoch wrote on Twitter. “Do you know it too, Mr. Kretschmann?” His colleague from the FDP, Hans-Ulrich Rülke, said the union’s criticism of Strobl was “scathing”. Only Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann does not recognize “that this minister has finally been burned to death. He cannot ignore this vote of no confidence. How long does he want to watch?” Kretschmann expressed his “full confidence” in his Deputy Prime Minister Strobl on Wednesday, but did not comment on the investigation.