First day after the summer break

The first trial day after the summer break was rather uneventful. The first witness was a police officer from the Federal Bureau of Investigations who had been present when Gerlach showed the police the flat where he had handed over the gun to “the Three”. The officer confirmed all this upon questioning by the presiding judge.

In preparation for the testimony of further witnesses concerning several crimes who had seen the likely perpetrators on bikes, several videos and photographs were shown – a video bulletin concerning the search for Zschäpe, Böhnhardt and Mundlos, footage from a surveillance camera in the Keupstraße in Cologne from the day of the bombing attack showing the perpetrators on bikes, as well as a number of pictures of the fire in the Frühlingstrasse in Zwickau.

One witness from Nuremberg confirmed that she had seen two byciclists dressed in black shortly before the murder of İsmail Yaşar and very close to the crime scene. She had become afraid because one of the two men had stared at her. When driving away, she had heard four or five shots, but had pushed that thought aside and explained the noised to herself as noise from playing children.

In her first police examination, she had described one of the perpetrators as “of Southern European origin”, but that she had called the police the next day and described him instead as well-tanned.