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Saturday, June 14, 2003
Police find cocaine in German
Jewish leader's flat
From
Roger Boyes
in Berlin
POLICE said yesterday that traces of cocaine had
been found in the Frankfurt apartment of Michel Friedman, the
prominent deputy head of the German Jewish community.
They searched his apartment after a tip-off from Berlin
investigators who arrested a Polish-Ukrainian prostitution gang. One
of the arrested women said she was part of a group that supplied
sexual services to celebrities, and claimed that she saw Herr
Friedman take cocaine. The furore whipped up by the raid on the home
of Herr Friedman, a Christian Democrat politician, has shaken some
long-standing taboos in German society.
Since the Hitler years the press has been
very cautious about openly criticising members of the Jewish
community.
Herr Friedman, whose parents were saved from death in Auschwitz by
Oscar Schindler, has refused to comment on the accusation. But
the mass circulation Bild newspaper, part of the Springer
group, which requires its journalists formally
to support the state of Israel, said in a headline yesterday,
even before the police had tested the white powder found by dogs in
the raid, "Drug-thriller Friedman".
The police took a hair sample from Herr Friedman and confiscated
documents. Three small paper sachets, "typical of the drug milieu" in
the police phrase, were analysed and at least one tested positive for
cocaine. Cocaine abuse is common among Berlin celebrities, and it is
rare for the police to act. This has stirred speculation on why the
police should suddenly have singled out Herr Friedman.
It was Herr Friedman who, through his sharp questioning on his own
television talk show and public statements as a politician, had
branded Jürgen Möllemann, a Free Democrat
politician, as anti-Semite. Herr Möllemann had printed an
election pamphlet attacking Israeli policies; Herr Friedman accused
him of trawling for far-right voters.
After the Free Democrats lost badly in the general election, Herr
Möllemann, who was being investigated for suspected fraud, was
ostracised by his own party and died last week when his parachute
failed to open in what appeared to be
suicide.
One newspaper suggested yesterday that somebody was trying to even
the score for his death by dragging down Herr Friedman. If Herr
Friedman does not dispute the cocaine find, his days as a television
celebrity could be numbered, and with it his power to argue the
Jewish case in German society. Four planned television shows starring
him have been removed from the schedules.
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- Picture
at top: Michel Friedmann speaks often at schools, lecturing pupils
on right and wrong.
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