Sir, – Having read “German chancellor in Dublin denies Daniel Tatlow-Devally is facing ‘show trial’,” (Politics, July 28th), in which chancellor Friedrich Merz is quoted as saying “It is absolutely clear that this is a correct trial and not a show trial”, two questions come to mind, having studied what constitutes a show trial in both history and jurisprudence at university many years ago.
What exactly is a show trial? It is generally defined as the trial of a defendant charged with a “crime” that carries political overtones and which is staged with maximum publicity in order to make a political point both to foreign observers and to the defendant’s sympathisers.
Show trials tend to be retributive rather than corrective and are conducted for propaganda purposes as much as for justice. The term is usually traced to the Shakhty trial of 1928 in Stalin’s Russia and later associated with the People’s Courts of 1930s Germany.
Does what we have seen so far meet that definition? Under both European civil law principles and European human rights standards, pretrial detention is supposed to be a measure of last resort, used only where there is clear evidence of a risk of either absconding, interference with witnesses or further offending.
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Courts are supposed to review detention regularly and give reasoned decisions showing that continued custody remains necessary and proportionate.
Defendants should be presumed innocent throughout and should not face security measures such as glass enclosures or restraints unless individually justified.
The defendants must be able to communicate freely and confidentially with their lawyers at every stage, and proceedings should be conducted fairly, transparently and within a reasonable time, with a certain equality of arms between prosecution and defence.
These principles are reflected in articles 5 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, in EU procedural rights directives and in the civil law traditions of jurisdictions such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, all of which emphasise judicial oversight, proportionality and the protection of fundamental rights.
There has been very little sign of such best practice in this case. Tatlow-Devally has spent months in near-solitary confinement, and his trial is being heard in the Stammheim complex in Stuttgart, a site whose name is still associated with the Bader-Meinhoff Gang (aka the Red Army Faction) trials of the 1970s.
Whatever the merits of the underlying charges, it is a curious thing for a chancellor to insist there is nothing out of the ordinary here. – Yours, etc,
Leo E Sharkey,
Bratislava,
Slovakia.
