Beate Bahner, in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg, has a 25-year career and has won three cases before the Federal Constitutional Court (German Supreme Court) in the domain of unlawful infringements of the right to practise one's profession. She has written five books on medical law, most recently an analysis of the 2016 federal act to tackle corruption in the healthcare system.

On Friday 3 April 2020, Ms Bahner issued a press release decrying the German government's Coronavirus measures as "flagrantly unconstitutional, infringing to an unprecedented extent many of the fundamental rights of German citizens". The statement argued that the small minority of the public that was at risk of serious harm in the event of contracting Covid-19 could be far more suitably protected by means of targeted measures based on the principle of adult responsibility for safeguarding one's own health.

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Violent committal to psychiatric clinic

On Easter Monday, a recording was uploaded of a calm 12½-minute voicemail left by Ms Bahner for her sister, describing a massively brutal swoop on her home on Easter Sunday evening (12 April). The voice in the recording matches a previous video recording of Ms Bahner (ironically, one in which she describes nursing liability law). In the voicemail, Ms Bahner recounts:

I went into the garage and found a car following me suspiciously. After standing in front of my car for ten minutes, I sensed something was not right and ran back out of the garage. Stupidly, I didn't run into the house, because my secretary had gone to get her car on Voss-strasse and she just didn't show up again ... I asked a passing car to call the police for me. They simply kept refusing to [respond] for five minutes, and then I realised it had been a huge mistake to call the police, because at the moment I'm Number One Enemy of the State.

When the police did arrive, I told them I felt threatened. They brought the handcuffs out and pushed me to the ground with massive force. They kept me sitting in their car for ten minutes with my hands cuffed behind my back, then they drove me around the corner to the psychiatric clinic. There were four police officers there, three nurses, and a doctor, though she only arrived ten minutes later.

I asked to be allowed to sit down and was shown to a bench. Then I asked to have the handcuffs taken off, since it was actually I who had requested police protection. But instead, I was thrown to the floor again, having my head hurled onto the stone floor from a metre (3 ft) height, which nobody reacted to. Then they asked me whether I wanted a face mask, which of course I declined.

Because I refused to move, they physically carried me to the doctor, who asked me "why I felt threatened", even though they all know perfectly well who I am. I was told I would not be given a lawyer.

She goes on to describe in the voicemail her unfamiliarity with the psychiatric facility to which she was taken, even though she is a local lawyer who apparently had to visit clients in that clinic in the past:

Then I was forced to spend the night lying on the floor in some high-security Guantanamo psychiatric clinic, which I didn't recognise; it's been renovated. There was no toilet, no sink, though they did allow me water, and there was a bell I could ring, though they ignored it after the third time I pressed it.

After a further ten minutes of description of how Ms Bahner was "upgraded" from the floor of an isolation cell to a proper furnished room with good nurses, she ends the voicemail to her sister with the observation:

I have been held here for 20 hours now. If people don't finally wake up, this is going to turn into the worst régime of terror ever ... We are being tyrannised by evil, evil, evil forces. Last night, I was petrified of being killed, of being forceably injected. I am fearful of being disappeared ... Because I had been without a mobile phone at the time I was arrested, I had no way of contacting anyone ... I have a summons for Wednesday [15 April] because I allegedly breached Article 111 of the Penal Code, "Incitement to Criminal Acts". I called upon people to demonstrate! Freedom of speech was the most fundamental constitutional right in Germany, and in the space of three months it has become a criminal act.

Ms Bahner's presence at the Klinik für Allgemeine Psychiatrie on Voss-strasse in Heidelberg, a university clinic, was confirmed on Tuesday 14 April in a telephone call by journalist Hagen Grell. The clinic told him that it had put out a public statement on the case and refused to allow him to speak to Ms Bahner, but suggested that if he were able to obtain her mobile telephone number, he would be able to call her directly.

The detention has also been reported by local Heidelberg media, regional media and a national news source. Ms Bahner's interview for "incitement to commit criminal acts" is reportedly scheduled for 1 pm on Wednesday 15 April at the K6 Heidelberg Criminal Police Department on Römerstrasse.

On Tuesday 14 April, Attorney W. Schmitz wrote to the German Federal Bar Association that it should take up Ms Bahner's case, if only because the Psychiatric Treatment Act did not in his understanding justify the committal of a person to an institution on the "alleged perception of a police officer" that she appeared confused. He added:

I should not have to add that Ms Bahner's claims of very grave abuse have very untoward connotations of the darkest chapters of German history. The mere fact that she claimed to have been so badly abused was what prompted me to write to you.

Ms Bahner is in the company of over 50 well-known experts in criticising the nationwide lockdown; I would be glad to furnish you with a list of their names.

If it really is the case that lawyers critical of government measures can now be intimidated using the state legal apparatus or psychiatry, and can be professionally and socially destroyed, then it is five minutes to midnight in this country.

Confinement of whistleblowers in psychiatric institutions, an old Soviet technique, has previously been reported by UK Column from Lancashire (in our most viewed ever video, an interview with social worker Carol Woods, who we understand has recently been released but remains at threat from persecutors); from North Yorkshire (in the Hofschröer case, extending to Germany and Austria); from Nottinghamshire (the case of Melanie Shaw, who is now being well looked after in another institution); and from Cornwall (the case of Emma, a mother who had reported apparent sexual grooming going on at her child's primary school).

UPDATE: A statement on Ms Bahner's website of Wednesday 15 April indicates that she was released from psychiatric committal the previous evening. In the early afternoon of 15 April, dozens of protestors rallied in front of the Heidelberg Criminal Police building where Ms Bahner had just been interviewed for alleged incitement to commit criminal offences. Ms Bahner told the assembled crowd that she had been given a date, apparently for a further interview.

Ms Bahner's statement ends:

Beate Bahner requires no legal representation, since practically the whole legal profession and the whole judicial system has utterly failed in the past two weeks, thereby contributing to the abolition of the rule of law and the lightning-quick setting-up of the most monstrous and appalling régime of injustice that the world has ever seen.

A statement of 14 April by the Heidelberg Public Prosecutor, the body's second press statement on Ms Bahner, announces that her prosecution by criminal police and the State Security Department is continuing and insists that the criminal proceedings against her have nothing to with "either the psychiatric committal of the accused or any other use of force by law enforcement".

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