Britta Böhler

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Britta Böhler (born July 17, 1960) is a Dutch lawyer of German origin. She is a naturalised citizen of The Netherlands.

She gained public attention when she defended the Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Öcalan, Volkert van der Graaf and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. These cases made her a well known political lawyer in The Netherlands.

[edit] Early life and education

She was born in Freiburg, where she later studied law and philosophy; she also gained her Ph.D in law in Freiburg. Supposedly she chose law because it offered a wide range of possible opportunities in the future.

As a student Böhler sympathised with the Palestinian people and studied the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Because of that it is sometimes claimed that she sympathised with the German terrorist organisation Red Army Faction. While she denies that claim, she does admit that she supported the RAF goals to a certain degree. She does, however disapprove of violent action. One of her role models is Otto Schily, the lawyer who defended RAF member Gudrun Ensslin. 'It must have been a very tough time for him since in those days a lawyer who defended the members of Baader-Meinhof was immediately suspected of being a member himself.' said Böhler in a Vrij Nederland interview in 2000.

While working towards her degree she worked for Peat Marwick GmbH in Frankfurt where she specialised in business and corporate law. Her parents were fanatic and active supporters of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

[edit] Career

She moved to the Netherlands in 1991 following a relationship with a Dutchman. She began her career in The Netherlands working for the prestigious Loeff Claeys Verbeke firm. In 1994 she resided briefly in South Africa where she helped in the preparations for the first free elections since the fall of the Apartheid regime under the auspices of the Stichting Juristen. The land and the people left a deep impression on her. From that moment on she called herself a political lawyer.

Returning to The Netherlands she joined the law firm Van den Biesen en Prakke, that was known to be a left-wing, activist law firm. The law firm is now known as Böhler Franken Koppe Wijngaarden. She also joined the board of Greenpeace. She calls herself a political lawyer. She stated in an interview:

[A political lawyer is one that] takes on cases where there is more at stake than purely judgement of the crime. Cases where the political aspects, history and background motivation of the client are important. When we take on a case the whole firm asks the question: is this a motivation that we can support? We weigh the different options. I do not decide myself about a client such as Öcalan. This is a big political case that affects the whole firm; media-attention, threats.[1]

She garnered large amounts media attention by defending suspected terrorists and publishing criticism of the changes occurring within the legal system due to the threat of terrorism. She is known to have said that she will take on cases that she knows she will lose if she can find herself in the aforementioned political motivation. A good example is the case of Jorge Zorreguieta. He was a minister in the Argentinian junta of Jorge Rafael Videla. When Zorreguieta arrived in The Netherlands, due to the pending marriage of his daughter Máxima Zorreguieta with Dutch Heir Apparent and Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, the former ambassador Mourik filed charges against him. Böhler took the case on knowing that she would have little chance of getting a conviction let alone a trial or even a hearing.

In 2003 she was guest in the prestigious Dutch television programme Zomergasten, in which she was extensively interviewed about her career and ideas. Her later client Ayaan Hirsi Ali was also a guest in the same series.

In 2005 she defended suspected terrorist Samir Azzouz, a member of the Hofstad Network, and other members of the network.

In November 2006 she announced that she wanted to enter the Eerste Kamer of the Dutch parliament on the list of GreenLeft, and was placed on the second place on the list by the February 3 2007 GreenLeft party congress.