A former member of the fascist police filed a petition for rehabilitation against his conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity. From 1940 to 1943, he served in a police battalion that was deployed in the Polish and Soviet territories occupied by the Nazis. According to the findings of the trial court, he participated in arbitrary executions, during which he personally killed at least one person; in violent arrests and roundups for the purpose of deportation to Germany and the subsequent use of the victims as forced laborers there; in the mass extermination of political opponents; in brutal reprisals against the civilian population, and in mass extermination operations carried out under Hitler’s decree for the “Barbarossa” area. The number of victims of the operations in which the convicted person participated, according to the aforementioned findings, runs into the thousands. The Regional Court granted the motion for rehabilitation by declaring the underlying judgment to be contrary to the rule of law. The Higher Regional Court agrees with the substance of the Regional Court's ruling and rejects the application for rehabilitation on only two of the eight points.

Art. 6 lit. b., c. of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Art. 8, 91 VerfDDR, §§ 91 II, 93 III StGB, § 1 VI EG zum STGB u ZPO der DDR, Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity