Federal Minister of Justice Buschmann has targeted Russian war criminals and does not want them to go unpunished. In addition, the FDP politician reveals in an interview with FOCUS that he does not see Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover as a problem. He still wants to keep an eye on the tech billionaire.
Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) wants to intensify the fight against Russian war criminals on German soil. In order to search for the perpetrators and punish their crimes, “we need an efficient network and international coordination,” said Buschmann in an interview with the Berlin news magazine FOCUS. At the end of November he will host the first G7 meeting of justice ministers, which will then take place in Berlin. “There, too, we will focus on the prosecution of war crimes.”
Germany has “a good reputation worldwide for the prosecution of war crimes because we have implemented the so-called ‘universal legal principle’ more consistently than almost any other country,” Buschmann continued. Background: Someone who has committed war crimes elsewhere can also be tried here in Germany if they are apprehended in Germany.
“And that has been very successful in the past,” Buschmann told FOCUS. “We tried Assad’s torturers in Germany when we got hold of them.”
But the FDP man also has a lot to do domestically – from the crisis in his own party to the dispute with eco-activists to the question of whether the new Twitter owner Elon Musk can also be legally prosecuted in this country if he spreads fake news, for example . “If Mr. Musk would theoretically say something that is punishable, there could be an obligation for the company to delete it,” Buschmann told FOCUS.
“But that’s nothing special, because the same rules apply to him as to everyone else. Justitia is blind to the person. For them, all people are equal before the law.”
The recent change of ownership of Twitter was “something unproblematic at first”. “But there are rules for platforms, such as the new Digital Services Act at European level,” explained Buschmann. “For example, there must be a reporting infrastructure for statements that are illegal or punishable. It doesn’t matter who owns Twitter.” But he himself is “not a censor and doesn’t want to be one either”.
Buschmann himself is often active on Twitter, where he has over 88,000 followers. He also doesn’t want to stop tweeting, although he says: “Of course there are many fake accounts, trolls or bots. But that’s not all. Even normal people who get angry at times need to be able to express their frustration as long as they don’t offend others. These platforms fulfill an important social function.”
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He also thinks it would be “wrong to leave these platforms to those who only want to spread bad moods or fake news. I simply don’t begrudge them such a success.”
After all, the 45-year-old admits that he sometimes gets in a bad mood on Twitter. Buschmann’s conclusion: “The fight for the true and the good is not a feel-good program. We have known that in politics for a long time.”
On Saturday in FOCUS Magazine: the big interview with Marco Buschmann. About the modernization of the republic, which is more necessary than ever, eco-activists becoming more and more radical and his disputes with Health Minister Karl Lauterbach.
