Fischer Investigation Reportedly Dropped

Investigators probing whether German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer lied in court over his 1970s contacts with a far-left guerrilla have decided not to press charges, the Bild newspaper reported Friday.

Bild said state prosecutors had uncovered no grounds to believe that Fischer lied about his association with Red Army Faction member Margrit Schiller while appearing as a character witness in the January murder trial of another former guerrilla.

A spokesman for the Hesse state prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt, which launched the investigation in February, said it could not comment.

The militant far-left past of Fischer, vice chancellor and a leading figure in junior coalition partner the Greens, came under intense scrutiny when he was called to testify in the trial of ex-comrade Hans-Joachim Klein.

In February, Klein was sentenced to nine years in prison for murder for his role in a 1975 attack on a Vienna meeting of oil ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Three people were killed.