On February 25, a Stuttgart court decided to submit a case to the German Constitutional Court with reference to the opinion of the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) Advisory Opinion that generally outlaws nuclear weapons.

The case is a "de-fence" action at EUCOM, the command center for U.S. forces in Europe.  On September 1, 1996, Anti-War Day, sixteen activists removed three yards of the fence, which protects the high rank military installation, and advanced on the area to claim it symbolically for peaceful ends.  It was the sixth in a series of seven such actions to date.

Two years earlier thesame Judge Wolf acquitted nine defendants in previous actions under adefense of necessity but his judgment was set aside by a higher court.

The Constitutional Court had to deal with the issue already in the 1980s on the occasion of the deployment of the Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Germany.  At that time the court justified nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence and retaliation "in accordance with international law." Defendants believe that after the opinion of the ICJ it seems impossible to maintain that position any longer.

For more information, contact EUCOMmunity, c/o Wolfgang Sternstein, Hauptmannsreute 45, 70192 Stuttgart 1, Germany.

(Thanks to Wolfgang Sternstein for this information.)

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last updated July 10 1998