Lies and Trivialization, Part IX – music friends in Saxonia.

The trial day began with a witness statement on the „weapons identification“ in February 2012 in which accused Schultze had been shown several guns with and without silencer from the “gun collection” of the federal police and asked to “identify” the murder weapon Ceska 83. As could be expected, this did not lead to any concrete results.

The court then heard witness Antje Probst, who according to statements of informer Carsten Szczepanski had been involved in supporting Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt after they had gone underground, inter alia having offered to provide Zschäpe with a passport to leave the country.

Her testimony was interrupted after several hours of questioning by the presiding judge, it will continue on 10 December 2014. Probst put extreme effort into trivializing her activities. One situation that is characteristic for her statement: she denied having known the Eminger brothers. When told by the presiding judge that she had told the police that she indeed knew the Emingers, the witness answered “Oh shit! Of course now my credibility is really put into question.”

Probst also tried to get the court to believe that for her, “Blood & Honour” had not been a political activity: “We were talking in the pub, and we felt that it would be nice to have some music events…” Others from the group may have had political goals: “maybe a white world, people with white skin – maybe that played a role for some of them.” She reported that the group had organized one or two concerts per month, each attended by between 40 and 400 people.

She steadfastly denied having noticed or met the three who had gone underground – even after she had been shown a photo in which she can be seen right next to Mundlos and Zschäpe at a party or concert. She also denied having noticed that “the Three” had ended up in Chemnitz or anything to do with weapons, support for “the Three” or money being collected.

One interesting fact related by Probst concerned a discussion with Carsten Szczepanski sometime in 1997 or 1998: Szczepanski had told her that of the money made with concerts, 20,000 Marks were missing. Probst stated that she had believed that Szczepanski had used the money for his own purposed. However, her close friend Jan Werner (also a “B&H” member) had replied “You must be crazy, no one has stolen any money” and had ended the discussion by telling her to “shut up”. In other words, B&H had earned a lot of money with concerts, money which may have been one base of finance for the later NSU.

Before the questioning of Probst continues, the court will first hear her ex-husband, who was also active in the Nazi music scene, and informer Carsten Szczepanski – this will likely lead to a rather confrontative questioning of Probst.