Otto Schily | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Schily in 2015 | |
| Minister of the Interior | |
| In office 27 October 1998 – 22 November 2005 | |
| Chancellor | Gerhard Schröder |
| Preceded by | Manfred Kanther |
| Succeeded by | Wolfgang Schäuble |
| Leader ofThe Greens in theBundestag | |
| In office 29 March 1983 – 3 April 1984 Serving with Marieluise Beck andPetra Kelly | |
| Chief Whip | Joschka Fischer |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Antje Vollmer |
| Member of theBundestag forBavaria | |
| In office 2 December 1990 – 27 September 2009 | |
| Constituency | Social Democratic Party List |
| Member of theBundestag forNorth Rhine-Westphalia | |
| In office 25 January 1987 – 7 November 1989 | |
| Preceded by | The Greens List |
| In office 6 March 1983 – 13 March 1986 | |
| Constituency | The Greens List |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Otto Georg Schily (1932-07-20)20 July 1932 (age 93) Bochum,Weimar Republic (now Germany) |
| Political party | Social Democratic Party (1989–present) The Greens (1980–1989) |
| Alma mater | Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich University of Hamburg Free University of Berlin |
Otto Georg Schily (born 20 July 1932) is a former FederalMinister of the Interior of Germany, his tenure was from 1998 to 2005, in the cabinet ofChancellorGerhard Schröder. He is a member of theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and was a founding member of theWest-GermanGreen Party.
Born inBochum as the son of an iron works director, Schily grew up in a family ofanthroposophists. His younger brother isKonrad Schily, an academic and also a politician. They spent their adolescence during the war in Bavaria. The family opposedAdolf Hitler.[1] In 1962, he passed his second state exam after having studiedlaw and politics inMunich,Hamburg, andBerlin, thus being admitted to thebar; a year later, he opened his own law practice.[citation needed]
On 2 June 1967 Schily went to a demonstration in Berlin against the violation of human rights inIran. A student,Benno Ohnesorg, was shot dead by the police. He subsequently decided to represent the student's family.[2]
In the 1970s, he became a public figure as a trial lawyer, defending several guerrilla activists of the left-wingRed Army Faction. In 1971, he represented his friendHorst Mahler, who much later would become an advocate of the fascistNational Democratic Party. During theStammheim trial (1975–1977), he was the only remaining attorney ofGudrun Ensslin. While he gained popularity and respect for acting according to his own moral principles, some accused him of supporting the radicals' goals.
In 1980, Schily became founding member of theGreen Party. In 1982, he joined other members of the Green Party for a meeting with Libyan leaderMuammar Gaddafi, who offered to help groups allied with the Europeananti-nuclear movement to try to closeUnited States military bases in Europe.[3]
In the1983 elections, Schily was elected to the German Bundestag and in the first electoral term in which the Greens were represented in parliament, he was one of the spokespersons of the parliamentary group, together withPetra Kelly andMarieluise Beck. In parliament, he became a leading exponent of the party'srealist wing, which favored striving for a governing coalition with the Social Democrats following the1987 elections. In 1986, he was the Greens' sole representative on a Bundestag committee investigating the so-calledFlick affair.[4] Due to the party's policy of rotating its representatives, he had to leave parliament in 1986, but he was re-elected in 1987.
Increasingly estranged from the fundamentalist wing of the Greens, particularly regarding alliances with larger parties,[citation needed] Schily left the party in 1989, resigned his seat in parliament, and joined theSocial Democrats (SPD) instead – which he represented in the newBundestag in 1990. In subsequent years, he was active in affairs of the former East Germany and in coordinating various legal policies of the SPD. Between 1994 and 1998, Schily served on the Committee on the Election of Judges (Wahlausschuss), which is in charge of appointing judges to theFederal Constitutional Court of Germany. He was also a member of the parliamentary body in charge of appointing judges to the Highest Courts of Justice, namely theFederal Court of Justice (BGH), theFederal Administrative Court (BVerwG), theFederal Fiscal Court (BFH), theFederal Labour Court (BAG), and theFederal Social Court (BSG).
AfterGerhard Schröder became chancellor in 1998, he appointed Schily as Federal Minister of the Interior. He was the oldest member of the cabinet.
During his time in office, Schily was frequently criticized for conservative policies, such as pushing through German anti-terrorist legislation after the11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, which were seen as contradictory to his earlier beliefs.[citation needed] Under the new legislation, his ministry moved againstMetin Kaplan’s radical Islamic group in December 2001, banning it and 19 associated organizations and carrying out more than 200 raids in seven cities.[5]
Between 2001 and 2004, Schily led the government’s negotiations with the conservative opposition on a bill that made it easier for skilled workers to move to Germany but toughened controls on foreign militants.[6] In 2004, he joined Italy in proposing the creation of the camps, possibly in Libya, to process potential immigrants and repatriate illegal arrivals to the EU.[7]
In 2001, the parliamentary opposition called for Schily’s resignation in light of revelations that his ministry had failed to inform theFederal Constitutional Court that a key witness in the government’s petition to ban the far-rightNational Democratic Party (NPD) had worked as an undercover agent for the domestic intelligence service; the failure to notify the court later resulted in the suspension of the proceedings.[8]
In 2005, Schily again came under pressure for authorizing a raid on the newsroom ofCicero magazine after it had published information from a secretFederal Criminal Police Office (BKA) report.[9]
On 29 March 2007, Schily took responsibility for the handling of the case ofGuantanamo detaineeMurat Kurnaz, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2001, turned over to United States authorities and held at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba as a terror suspect. Kurnaz was released in 2006 and returned to Germany.[10]
Following the2005 elections and the formation of the new government ofChancellor of GermanyAngela Merkel, Schily was succeeded in his post byWolfgang Schäuble. Schily remained a member of parliament until 2009 and served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In 2008, he caused headlines when the German Bundestag on 22 April fined him €22,000 for failing to disclose the names of his law firm’s clients.[11] Otto Schily opposed compulsory vaccination as unconstitutional in an article in Die Welt.[12]
After serving as a minister, Schily became a supervisory board member of two companies for biometric technologies, raising questions as to whether or not he was capitalizing on his work as minister, regarding the implementation of biometric passports.[13][14][15]
Between 2006 and 2007, Schily served as member of theAmato Group, a group of high-level European politicians unofficially working on rewriting theTreaty establishing a Constitution for Europe into what became known as theTreaty of Lisbon following its rejection byFrench andDutch voters.
In 2015, Schily was accused of receiving money to lobby for the prosecution in Austria ofRakhat Aliyev, a former Kazakh official who turned against the Kazakh government.[16]
In addition, Schily has held various paid and unpaid positions, including the following:
In 2005, Schily received theLeo Baeck Medal for his humanitarian work promoting tolerance and social justice.[21]
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