Jens Söring returned home to Germany on December 17. He was greeted by a throng of reporters and supporters at the airport at Frankfurt am Main. He gave a very short statement thanking his supporters and stating that, for the time being, he wanted to focus on adjusting to life in freedom in Germany. I imagine this means we won’t be hearing from him for a while. Perhaps he will never again seek out the limelight to assert his innocence claims. That would be a welcome development.
I am glad that Haysom and Söring have been released from prison. I oppose capital punishment and life-without-parole sentences. Even people who have committed severe crimes should be given a second chance, as long as they no longer pose an active danger to society. Söring and Haysom do not; their chances of re-offending are negligible. As chance would have it, though, I came into an interesting new source of information on the case: a report written by an senior police official and insider to the case which addresses every single claim made by Söring’s supporters in exhaustive detail.
I have read this report, which is a fascinating and methodical dissection of the case. I wrote a short piece for the FAZ accompanying his return which you can read here. The link may get you past the paywall, or it may not; I have no control over this, unfortunately. If you’re curious, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page, and I’ll send you the article.
I don’t want to discuss the report in detail quite yet, because, believe it or not, I am going to be writing yet another article in German for the FAZ about the Jens Söring case. I only had time for a very brief discussion of the report in the FAZ article on December 17th. I’m working on a much fuller treatment of its conclusions, and a sort of final coda to all of the press coverage on the case of Jens Söring. After that, I’ll get back to more general posts about German law, which, after all, is the main purpose of this blog.
As it may be of interest, the link took me to a page that was not paywalled, but featured a bar at the bottom informing me that “this article was given to you by a subscriber”. Thanks!
Who wrote the report that you are referring that debunks Soering’s bogus claim of innocence?