The retrial of
Gustl Mollath came to end on Thursday with an acquittal from Bavaria’s top court. The court’s main judge, Elke Escher, also ruled that the 57-year-old Bavarian would be financially compensated for being wrongfully held against his will at a forensic psychiatric clinic for seven years.

There was no immediate comment available from the defendant.

When speaking to reporters in July, Mollath called his time in the clinic “unbearable.”

“It’s also a sensitive topic when you’ve had to experience over the course of many years what experts have said about you regardless of what behavior has been deemed unsound…it’s completely unbearable,” the defendant said.

Erroneous charges

In 2001, Mollath was charged for assaulting his wife and then slitting open the tires of her lawyer’s car. His action was linked to his accusations that his wife had been involved in a complex tax-evasion scheme at Bavaria’s Hypovereinsbank.

The indictment had stated aggravated assault and wrongful deprivation of personal liberty against his ex-wife, as well as damage to property.

Following several assessments of his mental state, the Nuremburg court ruled in 2006 that he could not be held criminally responsible and that his accusations against his ex-wife had been a result of serious paranoia. He was then transferred to the closed psychiatric ward where he was held against his will for seven years.

However, in 2012, a review of the 2003 dealings of the Bavarian HypoVereinsbank was made public by an investigative German TV magazine. The document backed some of Mollath’s tax evasion claims against his wife.

His retrial on Thursday in the southeastern city of Regensburg did not clear him of his guilt in the aggravated assault of his ex-wife. However, in Germany, once a defendant has already been acquitted of charges, a court cannot reevaluate the original charges during a retrial to hand down a heavier sentence.

kms/rc (AFP, dpa)