nly weeks before German Chancellor Angela
Merkel's visit to Ulan Bator, a court in Germany ruled that a Mongolian
official detained as part of an investigation into an illegal kidnapping
must be released. Criminal investigators here say the decision was
"removed from reality" and "counterproductive".
Official visits between heads of state, worldwide, follow strict
protocols and schedules determined far in advance. That means the
schedule on Thursday, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel carries out
the official part of her visit to Mongolia, is already common knowledge.
First, the Mongolian prime minister will welcome the chancellor to Ulan
Bator, the capital, with military honors. Then she is scheduled to meet
with Mongolia's president, followed by lunch with the prime minister.
In between, scheduled for precisely 10:15 a.m., comes the signing of a
trade agreement. Mongolia, once the heart of Genghis Khan's empire, is
considered a highly attractive emerging market, with a small population
but
large reserves of coal, iron ore, copper and gold. Berlin provides development aid totaling around €25 million ($34 million) annually.
That provides a number of conversation topics during a visit that
will last only a few hours, meaning there likely won't be time to
discuss the case of Bat Khurts, the head of Mongolia's National Security
Council. The case, which played out across France, Belgium, Great
Britain and Germany, reads like a political murder mystery. And it
caused a battle between the highest institutions in German
jurisprudence: the Federal Prosecutor's Office and the Federal Court of
Justice.
Like any murder mystery, it began with a killing.
On Oct. 2, 1998, in Ulan Bator, a masked duo, or perhaps an entire
gang, broke into the home of Sanjasuuren Zorig, the country's young
infrastructure minister, a leading member of the Democratic Union and a
man with an excellent shot at becoming prime minister. The attackers
killed Zorig, 36, by stabbing him and striking him with an axe. The
brutal crime served as a setback to the country's fledgling democracy
movement. The former communist party, MPRP, returned to power with a
promise to track down the murderers, presumably hoping to gain favor
with the people. In other words, they needed to find a guilty party.
A Spook at the Center
The man who came under suspicion -- or toward whom suspicion was
directed -- was Enkhbat Damiran, who was 43 at the time. If the account
of Mongolian authorities is to be believed, he was sent to a penal
colony as a teenager and later to prison for theft, assault and fraud.
He was released in late July 1998, they say, two months before Zorig's
murder. In 2000, and this much has been confirmed: Damiran immigrated to
Germany with his family. In 2002, he moved to France and applied for
asylum there under an assumed name. Around this time, Mongolia's
Interpol branch began searching for him again -- though not in relation
to the Zorig case, according to German investigators.
When these police actions proved unsuccessful, Mongolian authorities
came up with another idea: abduct Damiran and pin the political murder
on him back home. It's unclear who precisely gave the order to do so.
Mongolia's attorney general and the former ambassador to Berlin later
claimed the country's intelligence agency acted alone.
That's a curious defense, given the body of evidence -- and this is
where Bat Khurts comes into the picture. According to investigations by
two German institutions, the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation
and the Federal Prosecutor's Office, it is believed that Khurts was an
intelligence agent for Mongolia, although he was officially working as
First Secretary at the Mongolian Embassy in Budapest.
Two women, one of whom knew Damiran personally, allegedly led Khurts
to him in May 2003, in the northern French port city of Le Havre.
Damiran was lured into a trap, overpowered, drugged and brought first to
Brussels, and then to Berlin. On May 18, his abductors flew him out of
Germany on a jet belonging to the Mongolian national airline, MIAT. They
presented him to airport border guards as a Mongolian minister who had
gotten into a fight in Brussels and urgently needed to be brought back
home. According to witness testimony, Shirbazar Altansukh, consul at the
Mongolian Embassy in Vienna, contrived this story. Altansukh was later
removed from his post. The embassy declined to comment on the matter to
SPIEGEL.
Legally speaking, Damiran's ordeal up to this point could be defined
as nothing more than false imprisonment and assault. But German federal
prosecutors classified what followed in Ulan Bator as a "
Verschleppung,"
the German word that, in legal terms, is used to mean a specific type
of abduction driven by political motives. As an offense against national
security, this fell under the jurisdiction of the Federal Prosecutor's
Office.
In Ulan Bator, Damiran was told to confess to Zorig's murder and to
name who had hired the hit, perhaps a prominent politician from Zorig's
party. Damiran insisted he'd had nothing to do with the crime. He
insisted it once, twice and a third time.
Masked men sat in front of him, Damiran said in describing one
interrogation, and "two civilians with guns stood behind me. I was
shaking." He said he was so weak that he fell from his chair many times,
and he also described a mock execution in the woods near the capital.
'The Charges Were Clearly Invented'
Damiran had his defense attorney, Lodoisambuu Sanjaasuren, to thank
for making a record of these statements. Sanjaasuren smuggled a video
camera into the cell and recorded his client's statements, in a video of
just under 40 minutes. On Sept. 27, 2003, about four months after
Damiran's forcible return to his homeland, the Mongolian private TV
channel 25 broadcast the video.
Soon after, the country's attorney general dismissed the murder
charge against Damiran, on grounds that there was no incriminating
proof. Viennese law professor Manfred Nowak reinvestigated the case on
behalf of the United Nations and reached the same conclusion but with
different reasons. The case was dropped, Nowak believes, "because the
charges were clearly invented."
However, Damiran remained in custody. As a result of the TV broadcast
of his statements, he was then charged with betraying state secrets,
for which he was sentenced to three years in prison. Critically ill, he
was released on April 17, 2006, and died only five days later.
His family has since filed charges with the French police, who turned
the case over to the Germany's Federal Office of Criminal Investigation
(BKA) in Karlsruhe. The BKA in turn engaged the Federal Prosecutor's
Office, and the investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice
issued a warrant that soon went into effect across Europe.
Agent Khurts was now a German case, file number 1 BGs 13/2006. By
then the head of Mongolia's National Security Council, Khurts arrived at
London's Heathrow Airport on Sept. 17, 2010, for diplomatic talks in
Britain, only to be arrested at passport control. He claims he was lured
into a trap, and should be protected by diplomatic immunity as well.
Two different courts rejected both of these arguments. After 10 months
in custody, Khurts was extradited to Germany, arriving in Berlin on
August 19 of this year.
Release Criticized by Prosectutors
Soon, though, the Federal Court of Justice released Khurts at the
request of his defense attorneys, Frankfurt lawyer Egon Geis and his
Berlin colleague Rolf-Werner Bock. Geis maintained his client had
"tracked down Damiran and brought him to Berlin, nothing more." The
judges at the court's Third Criminal Division declared that the attack
on Damiran hadn't been "Verschleppung," the type of abduction charged,
since the "injured party wasn't facing political persecution." Even
then, the ruling continued, it wouldn't have qualified as
"Verschleppung" if there was "danger that the foreign state would ...
resort to means which are unacceptable from a legal point of view and
which would endanger the victim in life and limb."
Observers of Germany's justice system have long been aware of
in-fighting between the court division responsible for state security
and the Federal Prosecutor's Office. The ruling on Khurt's case, sources
with knowledge of the investigation say, was not only "removed from
reality," but also "counterproductive."
Upon arrival in Ulan Bator two weeks ago, the long-detained secret
agent was met by TV teams, and the deputy foreign minister shook his
hand. British newsmagazine
The Economist
commented
wryly that many in Mongolia likely believe Khurt's release "is a
goodwill gesture intended to smooth Mrs. Merkel's way" during her
upcoming visit.
Source:www.spiegel.de
In 2015 Mongolia will be the Official Partner Country of ITB Berlin – on 5 March at this year’s ITB Berlin the signing will take place of the Partner Country agreement between Mongolia and ITB.
