Lars Winkelsdorf is a recognized weapons expert and television journalist. But a lawsuit from years ago gives him no peace.
Anyone investigating illegal weapons purchases can easily become a target of the Public Prosecution Service Photo: Silas Stein/dpa
HAMBURG taz | He’s a minute late. “The parking spaces,” he says apologetically, “are hard to find here on Hamburg’s Binnenalster. Even though it’s warm, Lars Winkelsdorf isn’t wearing the straw hat he’s seen wearing on his X account, but a little undercover feeling would be nice. Lars Winkelsdorf came to hand over a USB stick with documents from a suitcase. His case.
The investigative journalist has already had many cases. In November, he and others published a major investigation on the investigative platform Correctiv about the dark channels through which German weapons come to Russia. Weapons are his subject, especially when they end up in the wrong hands, for example in the rocker milieu or in the extreme right-wing scene such as the ‘Blood and Honour’ network. He has already written a book about it.
To do the research, he says with gleaming eyes, he had to crawl over the terrain at night and dig in, and it sounds like he enjoys that sort of thing. Lars Winkelsdorf was a paratrooper in the Bundeswehr and trained police officers in shooting. If questions arise during missions, he is happy to be consulted: the angle was a bit unfavorable, but the shooting position was absolutely fine, “just the way I have learned it for years.” for example he wrote then after Assassination attempt on Mannheimand that was what it said star.
Winkelsdorf has attentive, alert eyes; he drinks water with lots of ice under a parasol. Of course, he has a gun permit and owns a number of firearms himself, he says. “There’s little point in showing police officers how an MP5 works and I have no idea.” An MP5 is a submachine gun, the fully automatic version is considered a weapon of war.
He’s just “a colorful dog,” says Winkelsdorf. But there’s a story that sticks with him when he suddenly found himself on the other side, where his name appeared in the lawsuits as “defendant.” Defendant Wi, Lars Winkelsdorf.
Filming on the black market
It was during recordings about the black market in Hamburg, about how easy it is to get unregistered weapons without a firearms license. It was supposed to be a television contribution, “Akte 07” on Saturday 1. Lars Winkelsdorf found someone who seemed to be dealing in such weapons. The man was then seen on the show. Masked so as not to be recognized, he presented his arsenal and gave information about his customers.
A second film followed for Kabel1, with the same main character, who would meet Winkelsdorf again a year later in the clubhouse of a shooting club: The man said that a gunfight had taken place in the red light district with weapons supplied by him.
Winkelsdorf filed a complaint. Perhaps he shouldn’t have, because the investigation he started quickly backfired. The man who presented his guns claimed that Winkelsdorf was just looking for someone to play gun dealer. He agreed to do so in the hope that Winkelsdorf would get him a gun license. He never dealt guns, but Winkelsdorf did sell him a submachine gun.
It is understandable that one defendant points to the other. Only: the Hamburg public prosecutor seemed to believe the man. Winkelsdorf, whose father was a high-ranking officer in the Hamburg police, was no longer seen in the indictment as an investigative journalist who worked for renowned programs such as the ZDF magazine “Frontal”, but as someone who produced fake reality and sold weapons behind it.
I am someone else
That was twelve years ago, but for Winkelsdorf it seems like only yesterday. “So now I was the arms dealer,” he says angrily. “It’s completely crazy,” he says, “great.” “It’s like they’re describing someone I’m not.”
Ultimately, Winkelsdorf was only convicted (and fined) in the second instance for having incited the man, who did not want to be an arms dealer, to drive his illegal weapons – including a number of shooting ranges prohibited by law – through Hamburg for the filming.
But even if it was just a matter of legal subtleties, the old procedure won’t leave him alone. Up until then, he had done well in business, says Winkelsdorf, who worked not only as a journalist but also as an expert and in that capacity also advised the arms industry.
But as the lawsuit dragged on until 2012, orders stopped coming in. Winkelsdorf estimates the losses he suffered as a result of the lawsuit at three to four million. To date, he says he has not yet reached the level he was at before the lawsuit, even though things are improving.
His thoughts still revolve around the trial, around the statement of the man who pretended not to be an arms dealer, while the LKA already was one at the time. There were indications that he actually supplied the red light district with weapons. Just two and a half years ago, he was sentenced to five years and three months in prison. In the meantime, Winkelsdorf says, the man has become an outdoor animal again.
Wrong movie
What Winklesdorf finds most bizarre is the fact that the recordings for Kabel1, for which he was eventually convicted, were not actually directed by him. He was there only as an expert; the production company for the article had made this clear to the LKA.
“I shouldn’t have been prosecuted for this at all,” he says. But this information was not included in the proceedings, even though the prosecutor knew about it.
Winkelsdorf accused the public prosecutor of manipulating the files at the time. He requested that his case be reopened. Since the beginning of July, the Hamburg Attorney General has also had a supervisory complaint: the files must finally be corrected.
“The ball is in his court now,” says Winkelsdorf, as he packs his pack of cigarettes. Despite everything, he seems hopeful. Still.