“It is just a board game”- informer and contact officer

Today the court first finished the questioning of Juliane Walther which had begun yesterday. She continued her brazen game of on the one hand feigning memory gaps, on the other hand presenting herself and her comrades as the main victims of the press and a leftwing public. The highlight of her testimony was marked by her recollection of an evening playing “Pogromly” with Wohlleben, Gerlach, Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe, which the witness recalls as the height of Normalcy: “It is just a board game, … it was just like playing a normal game.”

She was followed by Mr. Wießner, former contact officer for “Thuringia Home Guard”-leader Tino Brandt for the domestic secret service in Thuringia and now retired. His testimony today remained superficial, he will be called to testify again after Brandt’s testimony and was only asked to provide an overview today: Brandt had been recruited as an informer in 1994 and had been “switched off” for a short time in 2000 and for good in 2001. Brandt was always cooperative, would have done anything for money. He was the most important source regarding the extreme right, without Brandt the office would have been unable to provide decent information on that sector. (Of course, the fact that an office of the domestic secret service bases its political judgments solely on the testimony of an informer is in itself reason enough to shut down that agency.)

Wießner also stated that Andreas Rachhausen, who had driven back to Jena the car with which “the Three” had fled to Saxonia, as well as Juliane Walther had also provided information to him.

The testimony of Mr. Zweigert, Wießner’s substitute who had also been in contact with Brandt several times, was even shorter – he was sent home for now after he had shown no attempt to recall what had happened during these contacts.