(Deutsche Welle) One of the advantages of a constitutional state that ensures the rule of law is that it also applies those rights to people who deeply reject it. Even those who want to abolish the democratic system and fight by force for an Islamic state have the right to a fair trial with a lawyer of their choice. And this is exactly where Bernhard Falk’s self-proclaimed line of work begins. An imposing man with a large graying beard and balding head, he describes himself as an “emergency responder.”
Falk’s places of deployment are courtrooms and prisons. He looks after Islamist prisoners and travels the country up and down: returnees from Syria who presumably fought for the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) or other jihadi groups; members of the German Salafist scene who are accused of having recruited for jihad or of having helped young men on their way out to the Middle Eastern war zone; Islamists who are suspected to have sent money or equipment to the IS area and radicalized people who are prosecuted for planning terror attacks in Germany. For Falk they are all “Muslim political prisoners.”
