Last Thursday night in western Berlin, beneath the wartime ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church, police in riot gear watched a group of 60 people, mostly younger and many wearing headscarves or keffiyeh scarves.
Their chants left passersby with little doubt about why they were there: “Israel, the child murderer, financed by Germany”; “Zionism is a crime, keep your hands off Palestine”; “F**k you Israel! F**k you Germany, you will all go to hell!”; “There is only one solution: intifada revolution”.
After several rounds of chants, police moved in and picked nine people out of the crowd and detained them on various charges, including suspicion of incitement.
It’s exactly 18 months since the October 7th, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel left about 1,200 people dead and more than 250 people taken hostage, according to Israel. In response, the military campaign in Gaza has claimed about 50,000 lives, mostly civilian women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The aftershocks are still palpable worldwide, particularly in Berlin, home to a growing Jewish community and the largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East.
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Public demonstrations have become heated, emotional and contested affairs, testing postwar Germany’s commitments: to fundamental human rights; to stand by Israel and protect Jewish life; and to never again limit, as in the Nazi days, freedom of expression and assembly.
Week in, week out those commitments are being tested on the streets of Berlin. Police reports on marches speak of incitement, hate speech and violence against officers. Pro-Palestinian marchers tell a different tale: regular and often unprompted violence from police officers they say act with impunity and political protection.
Caught up in the middle of this 18-month stand-off are two Irish citizens – Bert Murray (31) and Shane O’Brien (29). They made headlines around Europe last week after being served with orders to leave Germany by April 21st, along with a Polish and a US citizen, arising from their participation in pro-Palestinian marches.
Murray, a Berlin-based artist who uses the pronouns they/them, indicated no plans to leave and an intention to seek an injunction against the order.
“I refuse to believe that a judge will allow this fascist political repression to go any further,” Murray told the In the News podcast.
Why are two Irish citizens being deported from Germany despite no convictions?
The case has prompted protest in Dublin from Opposition TDs, with Taoiseach Micheál Martin saying the cases raised “a fundamental concern in terms of their freedom of movement”, a fundamental right enjoyed by all EU citizens.
Such expulsions must clear a high legal hurdle, proving that a person’s presence poses a serious threat to the country’s security. This most often happens to those convicted of the most serious crimes, such as large-scale drug dealing. In Germany, the numbers of removals have risen sharply in the last years.
Official figures, combining cases of EU citizens deprived of their freedom of movement in Germany and deportation of third-country national deportations, showed that 255 people were ordered out of Germany on public security/order grounds in 2020. That total figure rose to 1,108 in 2023 and 688 cases in the first half of 2024 alone, the last numbers available.
Lawyers for O’Brien and Murray will file emergency injunctions against the orders on Monday.
In Germany, EU freedom of movement rights are regulated not at federal level but by the 16 federal states. Similarly, the orders against O’Brien and Murray to leave, though of German-wide significance, are an initiative of the city-state of Berlin: issued by Berlin’s migration office on orders by the state interior ministry.
The latter said the decision to terminate their residence was based on legal provisions on a case-by-case assessment of “the danger posed by the individual, their social, professional, and cultural integration, as well as the purpose and duration of the stay”.
A key element of the orders against Murray and O’Brien, resident in Berlin for several years, is a pro-Palestinian protest on October 17th last year at Berlin’s Free University (FU). Amid a heated, if largely peaceful protest, police say a smaller group of about 40 sprayed graffiti on and near the building housing the university president and administration. Press images from that day show, in red letters: “Still Complicit” and “Fre [sic] Gaza”. Police say this group caused “considerable damage” by entering the building and causing damage requiring six-figure repairs.
An FU spokesman said that none of those facing deportation were registered as university students and that employees in the building on October 17th “did not perceive the incident as an attempted occupation, rather a violent attack”.
“Some of the affected employees are still reeling from the events and employees were offered psychological support immediately after the attack,” said the spokesman.
One staff member said: “It was a deeply traumatic experience, one that still hasn’t left me.”
The university’s student union has a different take. In a report, it noted a “wide range of reactions” among staff in the building targeted by protesters, with two people “visibly shaken”.
“The staff members we talked to did not report any instances of physical violence being used against them,” the report adds, noting no efforts by police at de-escalation or dialogue: “One of [the protesters] was brutally thrown to the ground by at least three policemen and later three others were caught, one of which appeared to be a bystander.”
Lawyers for Murray and O’Brien decline to discuss the events of October 17th as they have yet to receive the case files or details of charges.
For fellow protester Shane O’Brien, the order against him lists at least 14 incidents bringing him into conflict with the police, some dropped and others ongoing. A criminal police assessment said it was “noteworthy that, of the offences listed here, none took place beyond pro-Palestinian scene events”, O’Brien having not come to police attention outside of his protest activities.
The Murray-O’Brien cases have attracted considerable media attention in Germany, in particular, whether the two represent a real risk to public order or are facing a political intervention in the justice system.
The lead official in their cases is a Berlin state interior ministry official called Christian Oestmann. He is a member of Berlin’s co-governing Social Democratic Party (SPD), which controls the state interior ministry, and a former judge at Berlin’s state administrative court. A decade ago, in this latter function, he struck down a deportation order against a Turkish woman, raised and resident in Berlin, who had assault and manslaughter convictions but had been diagnosed with a serious psychological disorder.
In the ruling, he wrote: “The direct deportation of a foreign national ... must comply with the principle of proportionality and the requirement to guarantee effective legal protection.”
Christian Oestmann is on holiday until April 22nd and unavailable for comment, but Berlin-based migration lawyer Martin Manzel, a fellow member of the SPD, describes Oestmann as “not some ruthless hardliner”.
“He has a good legal mind and knows what he is doing when it comes to deportations,” he said. “He is not someone who yields to political pressure from above, so I can’t imagine that his actions here are motivated by anything other than legal concerns.”
Others take a different view, with one well-placed political observer in Berlin describing Oestmann as a “politically-oriented party person”.
“None of this originated with him; this is him enacting someone else’s political will,” said the source, suggesting Berlin mayor Kai Wegner and interior senator Iris Spranger are “coming under pressure for appearing to have done nothing” to date on the FU incident.
Berlin’s state interior ministry declined to say why the two Irish citizens were selected for proceedings and on whose initiative, saying the ministry “does not comment on speculation or rumours”.
