Thanks to the tremendous support of so many people from all over the world as well as all the publicty my case received, I am a free person once more – and, boy, does that feel wonderful!
Today I collected a letter from Judge Hannes Winge of Vienna’s Döbling Court informing me that he has stopped the court guardianship procedure initiated by Judge Michaela Lauer of Hietzing court on June 29th, 2010.
Judge Winge examined the reasons given to justify a court guardianship and found they were not at all credible although he appeared to be under great external pressure to impose a guardianship on me.
A big thanks to him for doing his job, for being ready to look at the facts and the evidence and for upholding the law with integrity.
The consequences of a court guardianship would have been dire for me. Such a guardianship should usually only be applied to the very elderly person if they can no longer take care of their affairs, for example, because they have Alzheimers. Not even Lilliane Bettencourt at 87 has a court guardian!
A court guardian has the power to make all decisions for you – take charge of your money, your property and consign you to a mental institute – and you can never get out because the court guardian makes all your decisions.
Just a couple of weeks I saw the scars on the arm of Harald Matschiner, an Austrian activist, after he was given forced drugs when he was consigned to a mental asylum for a week in what appears to be a disturbing new pattern of political persecution in Austria.
Judge Lauer of the Court in Hietzing initiated the court guardianship procedure in connection with settling the estate of my late father Dr Matthias Bürgermeister, who died on October 23, 2009.
In Austria, the local court routinely administers estates, so you cannot escape them. In the UK, by contrast, there is no automatic involvement by the local court. A solicitor handles an estate as happened in the case of my Mother who died in London.
Judge Lauer systematically misused the routine matter of winding up an estate to create excuses to put me under a court guardianship. Trivial and verifiably false as her claims were, it looked like she would get away with imposing a court guardianship on me because there seemed to be no independent mechanism of review functioning – not with the Ombudsman, not with the state prosecutors and not with the upper criminal court.
This apparent absence of any independent review turned a flagrant miscarriage of justice that should have been stopped fast into a Kafkaesque nightmare.
What this expereince had done is made me acutely aware of how the civil rights we have taken for granted can be snatched from under us by a corrupt judicial system.
Judges and state prosecutors played a key role in the collapse of Germany into a Nazi totalitarian state.
For their role in destroying justice and inventing “state crimes” and using the hollow forms of the law to hunt, arrest and imprison political opponents, the judges and prosecutors were putting on trial at Nuremberg in 1947.
Special „war laws“ which created an “enemy within” and special courts were set up to deal with political opponents in Nazi Germany, and there was no shortage of judges willing to pass the death sentences on critics of Hitler.
In Austria, new „terrorism“ laws which also creates an „enemy within“ and carries draconian prison sentences was due to come into force onAugust 1st, but the legislation has been postponed.
The room for the misuse of such a broad law to hunt down political opponents is obviusly gigantic. A justice system that acts as the long arm of the government and the corporations that control government can sweep up and imprison people under terrorism laws who express legitimate concerns about Baxter’s contamination of 72 kilos of seasonal flu with the bird flu virus in Asutria, inadeqautely tested vaccines and other social issues.
Most troubling is the fact that a corrupt segment of a judicial system in any one country, such as Austria, can now be used to arrest people in all of Europe following the introduction of the new European Arrest Warrant, trials in absentia and the European Invesigation Order.
Controls on whether such arrests are based on adequate evidence appear to be inadequate.
Anyone caught up in a nightmare of false accusations made by some corrupt judge in some part of Europe appears to have little chance of escaping.
It was only thanks to luck that I ever got to see the note of Judge Lauer in which she gave her reasons for putting me under a court guardianship. That was why I was able to photo copy it and then produce the documents showing every statement was false – and not even that seemed to help for a long time.
But how would anyone cope with false accusations coming from another country, perhaps not even knowing the precise accusations and unable to get hold of the evidence proving they were false without access to their home documents. And all this in a foreign language.
The dice are loaded; the game’s outcome foregone.
The Telegraph reported there has been a surge of arrests of Britons dragged to European courts under the new arrest powers. No doubt some cases are legitimate but there appear to be no adequate checks in place to stop illegitimate cases and to prevent some judges misusing their power to conduct large scale politically motivated arrests in Europe.
I sincerely hope no one ever again in Europe has to experience this very modern nightmare of having to face as an individual the monolithic power of a corrupted, totalitarian state. But my experience this summer has made me think this is a distinct possibility if we do not focus attention on ensuring that our justice systems are upholding the law.
The barbaric crimes of the 20th century were crimes committed by the state. Criminal states such as the Nazi German state plunged Europe into the dark ages, causing the persecution and deaths of millions in concentration camps and prisons.
Today, we are standing on the brink of a new totalitarian police state because our civic rights have been so substantilly eroded by these terrorism and other laws.
Ensuring every justice system upholds the law must surely be a top priority.
To finish, I would like above all to thank with my heart the many thousands of people who rallied to help me, who emailed me, and spread the word and who, by their great support, kept me free.
Indeed, to taste real freedom again after weeks of having this court guardianship hanging over me like a guillotaine is the most wonderful experience I have ever had.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Thanks to you Jane!, keep working!; all of us must be so responsible with humanity, with all of us, like you. We have to change. Thank you so much for your big big effort. Best wishes from Spain. Ana Fuentes.