Overview
- The Landgericht Karlsruhe discontinued the appeal on October 16 by agreement of the defendants, the prosecutor and the court, presided over by Judge Peter Stier.
- The three social workers will pay €3,150, €1,500 and €2,022 to a charitable organization, identified by Süddeutsche Zeitung as the Karlsruhe Child Protection Association, without admitting guilt.
- Judge Stier called the move a pragmatic step with signal value, noting that testimony from the workers would have had negligible impact on prosecutions.
- The trio had been fined by the Amtsgericht Karlsruhe in October 2024 for attempted obstruction after refusing to testify about a 2022 pyro incident that left eleven people injured.
- Fan groups renewed calls for a testimonial privilege for fan-project social workers, even as the federal government reiterated in August its opposition to expanding such rights.