BERLIN, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- A U.S. soldier who deserted the Army to avoid returning to Iraq and an artist who fled Switzerland's military draft are dominating headlines with their political asylum cases in Germany.
U.S. Army Specialist Andre Shepherd and Swiss-born artist Adam Tellmeister both emerged from hiding recently to make their cases public. While Tellmeister will soon end a most unusual 22-year odyssey throughout Europe because Switzerland is ready to pardon him, the fate of Shepherd, a 31-year-old from Cleveland, remains in limbo.
Shepherd served in Iraq between September 2004 and February 2005 as a helicopter mechanic. He has been hiding in southern Germany for the past 18 months after deserting his unit stationed at an army base near Nuremberg.
During his time in Germany, Shepherd realized he couldn't go back to Iraq, where Washington is conducting an illegal war, he said.
"I've done enough research to come to the conclusion that what is happening in Iraq is not the equivalent of World War II but outright massacre," he told the Financial Times. "We are not the freedom fighters we think we are."
Shepherd last week filed his application for political asylum with German authorities after receiving support from the Military Counseling Network, a private organization giving advice to people who are unwilling to go back to war.
Many U.S. soldiers in the past have fled to Canada, but asylum pleas in Europe are still very rare.
Germany's legal system requires the country to grant asylum to deserters fleeing from wars that are conducted in violation of international law. For the German government, the case is a delicate one.
If Germany granted Shepherd asylum, it would set a legal precedent that may persuade more of the roughly 65,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany to go AWOL, legal experts claim.
Berlin is not eager to trouble relations with Washington before President-elect Barack Obama takes office, observers say. German politicians are hopeful that Obama will intensify diplomatic ties with Europe, and especially Germany.
Meanwhile, Shepherd is considered a deserter in times of war, which carries a possible death penalty, although verdicts in the past have not exceeded two years of prison time.
The former soldier does not feel he is breaking the law -- much to the contrary. He said he did not want to be part of a war that was against international law.
"I am not the criminal. The people responsible sit in Washington."
Shepherd nevertheless has been living in constant fear over the past months, working illegally to make some money but generally avoiding leaving his hiding place.
Living in fear -- Adam Tellmeister knows too well how that feels.
For the past 19 years Tellmeister has been hiding in Berlin -- in an apartment in the Prenzlauer Berg district, where he squatted shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and where he has been living ever since. It looks like a furnished art gallery, its rooms covered from floor to ceiling with his drawings and paintings. Tellmeister says that over time, fear causes fugitives to develop "their own private security network."
"Wherever you are, you first search for exits to get out quickly," Tellmeister told United Press International over pizza and drinks in the apartment, which features a doorbell with a fake name. "You leave the bar immediately when there's a brawl. You pinch small spy holes in your curtains. And you train your ears. If a person walks up or down the stairs in this building, I can tell you from the sound of the steps whether that person lives here or not."
Tellmeister said he empathizes deeply with Shepherd. The artist regards people like Shepherd and himself as "part of a non-parliamentary opposition that must be protected."
Tellmeister, a pacifist, fled Switzerland in 1986 to avoid the military draft. He became the first Swiss national to apply for political asylum in Germany. Tellmeister's initial asylum request, filed in Essen, Germany, was refused by authorities. He later fled to the Netherlands, where he was also denied. After secretly entering Switzerland and spray-painting a government building, he was arrested by Swiss military police.
His trial in Zurich finished without him -- he fled the courthouse during a toilet break. Friends smuggled him out of Switzerland and into Berlin, which at the time was still separated by the Wall, to apply for political asylum in communist East Germany.
"I was never before questioned in such a nice way," Tellmeister, whose massive arms reveal that he's been boxing since age 16, remembered with a smile. Finally, a country would legalize his stay, he hoped.
But history stood in the way. It was November 1989, and the Berlin Wall fell, leaving the fugitive from Switzerland in despair. He squatted in the Prenzlauer Berg apartment, left behind by its owners, who had fled to the West.
Tellmeister had no documents and zero ties to his family in Switzerland, clinging only to an identity he had forged for himself. "Tellmeister" is a pseudonym based on his childhood idol William Tell, a legendary figure of disputed historical authenticity who is said to have lived in the alpine canton of Uri in Switzerland in the early 14th century. It's fittingly ironic that Tell was considered an outlaw before becoming a national hero.
In the years after Germany's reunification, Tellmeister worked odd jobs and organized a series of controversial art projects, painting frescoes on the side. One of his exhibitions featured works revealing Swiss military secrets -- Gregor Gysi, today the head of Germany's far-left Left Party, opened it.
Soon, Tellmeister became somewhat of an underground art star in the German capital, but his attempts to legalize his stay or open up possibilities for a return to Switzerland all failed.
That is, until Tellmeister developed a painting method that enables him to craft large-scale works that reveal to the onlooker revolutionary dimensions of depth. Tellmeister's paintings are so spectacular that big-name art dealers, politicians and the media flocked to his showroom in the basement of the apartment building, with large German publications like Der Spiegel reporting on his case.
The media hype did not pass without effect: The Swiss government recently granted Tellmeister a passport under his new name, which will be handed over to him in a ceremony on Saturday; early next year he will leave his Berlin apartment permanently, starting a second life in Switzerland.
"I have painted myself back home," he says.
