Actually, this is not so terribly alien to Germans.A staffer at a private bank from Lattakia told me in 2010 that when his brother knocked down a pedestrian in a car accident on a Damascus street he fled the capital for a month while his family attempted to sort out the issue. His family paid money to the family of the deceased. The state was not involved in this as#pect of governance and the brother faced no legal judgment for his crime. Law and justice are realms so weak, corrupt and disin#genuous in the state system that Syrians have rejected them in serious matters; they are forced to govern themselves; they can place no trust in the state.
The German law books have 15 paragraphs about crimes that will only be prosecuted if the victim demands it.
A further 12 paragraphs are about crimes that are basically the same, but a state attorney can still go after them if (s)he sees a public interest in doing so.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antragsdelikt
Germans (and people in Germany) are not obliged to report crimes (except the planning of certain crimes) in general (exception; police etc).
We would of course report such a homicide and police would go after the brother until it's believed that it really was an accident, but our legal situation does not demand that anyone reports the crime.
Bookmarks