Pass through airport-style security at Berlin’s administrative court and you’ll see a recruitment advert on the wall.
Like many public bodies, the Berlin courts are crying out for staff, but instead of “help wanted” or “jobs vacant”, the advertisement offers a weak pun: “Rechthaber gesucht.”
In German, a Rechthaber is a dogmatic person who seeks justice – or a person whose insistence on being right has a pedantic air.
Twice in the last fortnight, Berlin politicians, police and prosecutors have come across as the latter. Two courts, a short walk from each other, have each dismissed cases brought against two Berlin-based Irish citizens active in the city’s active Palestine solidarity scene: Shane O’Brien and Bert Murray.
Names of Defence Forces officers involved in sensitive operations published online
‘There’s no way I’m going to the US now’: Irish students choose Europe over J1 for summer jobs
The ‘two good salaries but still broke’ problem: What’s behind it and what can you do?
Inside a Quaker-ethos secondary school in Ireland: ‘There is a high expectation of good behaviour’
Both cases were apparently sparked by an October 2024 demonstration at Berlin’s Free University, when masked protesters broke into an administrative building, reportedly graffitied walls, damaged property and verbally threatened staff.
O’Brien’s case involved an alleged violent altercation between him and two police officers in that building.
His one-day court case ended without sentence when a video, produced by his defence lawyer, appeared to be at odds with earlier testimony by police officers.
In the police version of events, reflected in the charges against him, O’Brien was unmasked, violent and escaped detention when he was freed by a “mob”. The video shown to the court showed two masked individuals and a handful of others, walking away from the scene with no struggle.
[ Berlin court strikes out expulsion order against Irish citizen Bert MurrayOpens in new window ]
A passport reportedly dropped during the altercation, allegedly O’Brien’s, was retained by police as evidence but subsequently lost. It is not yet clear if the police will face proceedings for false testimony, according to a public prosecutor spokesman: “It must appear plausible that a criminal offence has been committed.”
The second one-day case at the nearby administrative court involved Bert Murray. Police detained Murray at the Free University (FU) in October 2024 but were forced to drop charges brought, similar to those against O’Brien, when police realised that Murray was in police custody when the events in question allegedly occurred.
[ Shane O’Brien acquitted of all charges related to Gaza protest in BerlinOpens in new window ]
In court last Wednesday, Murray was the complainant while the defendant was the city-state of Berlin’s migration authority (LEA). Parallel to the FU investigations, LEA – on orders from Berlin’s state interior ministry – began expulsion proceedings against O’Brien, Murray and two others. As radical Palestine activists, LEA prosecutors said, Murray and the others posed a risk to German security, national interests and safety of its Jewish citizens.
In testy exchanges, the judge reminded LEA lawyers that assumptions and aspersions are not evidence. To grant its request and revoke Murray’s EU right to freedom of movement and residence, the court would need more concrete proof of danger than a series of lesser charges, all dropped.
Before the court dismissed the expulsion order as illegal, LEA lawyers moved into Minority Report territory, arguing their concern was the general security risk posed by crimes Murray might commit in the future.
Unlike the 2024 FU protest and subsequent expulsion efforts, these recent rulings were barely covered in the Berlin media.
One exception was the conservative daily Die Welt. Its columnist Alan Posener wrote that, though he found O’Brien’s political views “deeply disagreeable”, no individual guilt was established, “and views are not punishable”.
“The rule of law is when people whose views and behaviour one finds abhorrent, enjoy the protection of the state,” he added.
The column was all the more remarkable given it was in Die Welt, in April 2025, that Berlin’s governing mayor Kai Wegner described Murray and O’Brien – long before their court dates – as “anti-Semitic criminals”. The expulsion efforts against them were, he said, “correct and necessary”.
Wegner, who is also head of the Berlin Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has declined multiple requests for clarification of his remarks, particularly after the recent O’Brien and Murray rulings.
Less media-shy is his political ally Burkhard Dregger, the Berlin CDU spokesman for interior affairs. In the same Welt article, Dregger referred to the FU protesters in general as “criminals” and said the city was justified to “make an example” of “so-called pro-Palestine demonstrations that, in truth, are pro-Hamas demonstrations”.
Even after the two court rulings, Dregger said he stood by his “criminal” remark: “I am not judging an individual’s conduct but the course of events in total.” Dregger speaks for many in Berlin’s ruling CDU – facing state elections in September – that the city’s Palestine solidarity scene is in the grip of authoritarian leftist and Hamas-adjacent groups.
How, they ask, is anyone in Gaza helped by masked people running around the FU campus – many non-students – shouting “from the river to the sea”? And what of Jews at the FU, and other institutions and across the country, who report a growing climate of fear, taunts and violence? They point to another ongoing Berlin court case involving the Free University and October 7th.
A German student with Palestinian family roots punched an Israeli student to the ground , kicking him repeatedly in the head and leaving him with serious injuries. The defendant admits the attack but denies an anti-Semitic motive and the case is moving towards its third round in court.
With Germany’s past and its present, the drama that has played out on Berlin’s streets since October 7th, 2023, is more complex than many of its leading players would like to admit – or onlookers outside Germany realise. The city has a large Palestinian population, many with family in Gaza, who see violent police crackdowns as political repression that criminalises their anger, mourning and even existence in the capital.
Simultaneously, Berlin has a smaller, but growing, Jewish population, many of whom are hiding symbols of their identity and living in fear that the next Swastika or Star of David will be swabbed on their door.
Drawing a victim-perpetrator line from one to the other is satisfying but simplistic. Each side in this conflict have real concerns and grievances, but some on each side are also playing to their respective gallery. And extreme actors in each camp are making life difficult for all.
The next round in this legal stand-off comes on Monday in Stuttgart, where Berlin-based Dubliner Daniel Tatlow-Devally stands trial with four others in connection with a break-in at a German subsidiary of Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.
Many Irish Palestine activists in Berlin, after over two years battling Berlin politicians, police and prosecutors, feel certain their adoptive home is a fascist state. If so, though, they have just had two remarkably good days in court.
