A Berlin court has struck out an expulsion order brought against an Irish citizen in the German capital which was based on security and public order concerns linked to Gaza solidarity events.<\/p>\n
Bert Murray, resident in Berlin since 2022, was detained at an October 2024 demonstration at Berlin\u2019s Free University and faced a police investigation.<\/p>\n
Separately, in March 2025, Berlin\u2019s city-state migration authority (LEA) served Murray, who uses they\/them pronouns, and three others with removal orders. This stripped them of EU freedom-of-movement rights and imposed a two-year entrance and residence ban.<\/p>\n
In emergency proceedings in May 2025, this expulsion order was paused pending legal proceedings against Murray over the university protest, since dropped.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, a panel of three professional judges at Berlin\u2019s administrative court, assisted by two lay judges, said this order was illegal. LEA had not, they said, met the high legal hurdles required to remove an EU citizen\u2019s right to freedom of movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need concrete, distinct indications that that the complainant is a criminal . . . [and] if you have additional insights you could have presented them to us,\u201d said presiding judge Larissa Maier-Bledjian, describing Murray as \u201ca person moving in a certain political sphere with certain political opinion\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge added: \u201cIn our view, as long as that remains in the realm of lower criminal charges \u2013 something we don\u2019t even have here \u2013 then there are insufficient [grounds for removal].\u201d<\/p>\n
The city migration authority based its order on its obligation to \u201cavert danger\u201d to the public order. It argued Murray\u2019s alleged actions and utterances at Palestine solidarity demonstrations contradicted Germany\u2019s security and national interests, including the right of the state of Israel to exist, and endangered German responsibility for Jews in Germany and their sense of security.<\/p>\n
In addition, Murray\u2019s alleged actions and utterances contradicted Germany\u2019s policy of \u201cStaatsr\u00e4son\u201d, a term meaning \u201creason of state\u201d used to describe its policy towards Israel.<\/p>\n
In a one-hour hearing, which Murray followed through a translator, their lawyer Joanna K\u00fcnne said her client had no criminal convictions and that Staatsr\u00e4son was a political and not a legal term.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething is being cooked up with lots of files but you cannot say what it is that makes the complainant so dangerous,\u201d K\u00fcnne said to lawyers for LEA.<\/p>\n
The court noted that Murray was known to police on various counts, including alleged use of proscribed symbols and slogans as well as breach of the peace at demonstrations and sit-ins. All charges had dropped either due to their negligible nature or because of difficulty ascribing anything directly to Murray.<\/p>\n
Charges relating to the university demonstration in October 2024 were not pursued after it emerged Murray was already in police custody at the time the alleged events they were being charged with took place.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaken together this does not give an impression of a considerable security risk or that the complainant represents a danger for the fundamental interests of society,\u201d said Judge Maier-Bledjian.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for Berlin\u2019s migration authority told the court the pattern of Murray\u2019s behaviour created a \u201cclear risk pattern\u201d and cited the likelihood of future crimes.<\/p>\n
The court noted that neither the migration authority nor state prosecutors had presented additional relevant evidence of criminal behaviour, nor did a recent state criminal police (LKA) assessment of Murray raise any major concerns.<\/p>\n
In a personal statement to the court in English, Murray described the expulsion order case as \u201canother iteration of state repression, specifically an attempt to manipulate EU migration law to paint a movement of people opposing genocide as violent, dangerous and extremist\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Berlin court has struck out an expulsion order brought against an Irish citizen in the German capital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-472115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116530537846074283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}