In mid-November 2001 U$-President George W. Bush signed a bill according to which alleged terrorists can from now on be put on trial secretly and world wide to US military courts; they can be convicted and thus even executed this way. Furthermore, the Minister of Justice has been empowered, similarly to the German "Kontaktsperregesetz", to abandon allcontact that the prisoners may have to the outside world, including their lawyers, if it is required by public safety.

It seems publicly unknown that also and especially in Germany so-called "Geheimprozesse", secret trials, i. e. trials without any public information, are possible. This means the public is not informed about either investigation, charges, the trial itself, nor the sentence.

The legal foundations are the §§ 172, 173, 174 of the "Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz (GVG)", the law dealing with the rules for trials. Being valid since 1888, § 172 of the GVG states that the court can decide to exclude the public, if this helps to avoid "endangerment of state security". The same applies, according to § 173, to the pronouncement of the sentence. Finally, § 174 claims that in such cases neither the press nor radio and TV are allowed to give any reports on the trial, or any official documents relating to the subject, to the public.

People violating these laws are subject to severe legal consequences.

We can only speculate on how many people have been sentenced and imprisoned under these circumstances in the past, for the above-mentioned § 174 prohibits all media coverage on the charges, the findings of the judges, appeal court decisions and other contents of files.

Any document in the files is by definition an "official document". Facing the current political situation in Germany, but also in Europe and the US, we can, we even must assume that the German administration of justice will in the - alleged - "war against terrorism" make expanded use of these secret trials. A possible hint on the European Human Rights Convention would be in vain, because its article 6 contains a similar regulation; besides, article 15 of the Convention allows for the suspension of almost all regulations of the Convention in case of a state of emergency.

This means that people who get involved in carrying out active resistance against this system should be aware that also in Germany secret trials are possible. Of course generally the administration of justice has an interest in acting as publicly as possible against our comrades in order to scare us off, but this does not alter the above-mentioned regulations.

Against criminalization of the anti-fascist and anti-imperialistic struggle!