1. Otto Georg Schily was born on 20 July 1932 and is a former Federal Minister of the Interior of Germany, his tenure was from 1998 to 2005, in the cabinet of Chancellor Gerhard Schroder.
14 Facts About Otto Schily
1. 2.
Otto Schily is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
3.
On 2 June 1967 Otto Schily went to a demonstration in Berlin against the violation of human rights in Iran.
4.
In 1980, Otto Schily became founding member of the Green Party.
5.
Between 1994 and 1998, Otto Schily served on the Committee on the Election of Judges, which is in charge of appointing judges to the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.
6.
Otto Schily was a member of the parliamentary body in charge of appointing judges to the Highest Courts of Justice, namely the Federal Court of Justice, the Federal Administrative Court, the Federal Fiscal Court, the Federal Labour Court, and the Federal Social Court.
7.
Between 2001 and 2004, Otto Schily led the government's negotiations with the conservative opposition on a bill that made it easier for skilled workers to move to Germany but toughened controls on foreign militants.
8.
In 2005, Otto Schily again came under pressure for authorizing a raid on the newsroom of Cicero magazine after it had published information from a secret Federal Criminal Police Office report.
9.
On 29 March 2007, Otto Schily took responsibility for the handling of the case of Guantanamo detainee Murat Kurnaz, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2001, turned over to United States authorities and held at the US prison camp in Cuba as a terror suspect.
10.
Otto Schily remained a member of parliament until 2009 and served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
11.
Otto Schily opposed compulsory vaccination as unconstitutional in an article in Die Welt.
12.
Between 2006 and 2007, Otto Schily served as member of the Amato Group, a group of high-level European politicians unofficially working on rewriting the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe into what became known as the Treaty of Lisbon following its rejection by French and Dutch voters.
13.
In 2015, Otto Schily was accused of receiving money to lobby for the prosecution in Austria of Rakhat Aliyev, a former Kazakh official who turned against the Kazakh government.
14.
In 2005, Otto Schily received the Leo Baeck Medal for his humanitarian work promoting tolerance and social justice.