The Council of States wants punishments for ‘fireworks offences’ to be reviewed

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On Monday, the small chamber passed a similar postulate by Andrea Caroni by 25 votes to 10 and one abstention. The State Council of the FDP of Ausserrhoden is specifically concerned with adapting the law to developments in the field of fireworks for private individuals.

In the motivation for his motion, Caroni spoke of “fireworks violations”. Today, careless actions involving recreational fireworks are treated in the same way as terrorist attacks, carrying a prison sentence of at least one year. The background is that the explosives law was originally created at the end of the 19th century to counter anarchist activities.

The Bundesrat opposed the order. Even today, the law makes no distinction according to whether someone makes a threat with terrorist intent, at work or in his spare time. Rather, the decisive factor is whether the data subject has done so intentionally or through negligence. In the latter case, there is no minimum penalty.

The state government also objected that the federal prosecutor’s office should remain responsible for all explosives crimes, already being explored in another postulate report. As signatures are currently being collected for a popular initiative to curb fireworks, relaxing the penal code is also politically inappropriate.

Caroni countered that the problem was that the federal court interpreted the concept of criminal intent in the law “absurdly broadly” to include conditional intent. For this reason, the article is applied “to Hinz and Kunz” today.

Justice Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider countered that from the point of view of the state government, both the legal regulations and case law were appropriate. The most recent corresponding judgment was by no means an innocent case.

(SDA)

Source:Blick