🇩🇪 Deutsche Version
Press coverage · 26 May 2025
t-online
Documenting the police deployments
t-online

Too much protest against Russia

26 May 2025  ·  By Lars Wienand  ·  t-online

What the article covers

  • At least 33 police deployments to the Russian House during 2024
  • Arrest on 18 December 2024: four hours in custody, forensic identification procedures
  • In the subsequent proceedings the police conceded that the deployment had been unlawful
  • The previous day: a knife threat against Lindemeier, and no police response despite a call
  • Two lawyers, Heinemann and Wolf, put the imbalance on the record
Why it matters The most robust of the six texts in legal terms. What it contains is not a suspicion of imbalance but its confirmation by the authority itself.

Police deployments

  • At least 33 deployments to the Russian House during 2024, prompted by reports from the House
  • 18 December 2024: handcuffed, held in a communal cell for four hours, forensic identification procedures
  • The allegations were insult and noise nuisance in preceding weeks, neither substantiated
  • In proceedings to establish the unlawfulness of the measure, the police formally conceded that the deployment had been unlawful

Threats

  • Spat at repeatedly, death threats muttered at him
  • The day before the arrest, a threat involving a knife, with no police response despite a call
  • A BSW delegation physically pushed him aside; the police told him to leave
  • He has worn a stab vest since, and was searched at an assembly because of it

Legal assessment

  • Noise measurements were never carried out and no limit value is cited
  • Complaint alleging incitement: the state criminal police had the song lyrics translated, they were not incitement
  • Complaints alleging insult were not substantiated
This page summarises the article in our own words and provides context. Quotations are marked as such and serve as evidence; they are translations of the German original. The full text is available from the publisher only, the link is at the foot of this page.

Lars Wienand's reporting is the point at which individual observations become a figure. t-online documents that Berlin police attended the Russian House at least 33 times during 2024 because Lindemeier was standing outside with his speaker. Those deployments were prompted by reports from inside the House.

The central episode is 18 December 2024. Lindemeier was arrested outside the Russian House, handcuffed, held in a communal cell for four hours and subjected to forensic identification procedures. The allegation was insult and noise nuisance in the preceding weeks; it was not substantiated. In subsequent proceedings the police had to concede formally that the deployment had been unlawful. This remains the only official acknowledgement of error in the entire affair.

The juxtaposition the article draws is striking. The day before the arrest, Lindemeier had called the police himself, because a visitor to the House had told him he would get a knife in the back one day. He waited 45 minutes. No one came.

Two lawyers assess this asymmetry in the piece. Patrick Heinemann calls it strange that the police keep pursuing nonsense. Christian Wolf reduces the imbalance to a formula: a reported noise nuisance sometimes brings three patrol cars, while no one was available when his client was threatened.

t-online also documents that noise measurements were never carried out, and that a complaint alleging incitement collapsed once the state criminal police had the disputed song lyrics translated.