Court rejects defense motion to revoke Mrs. S.’ right to join the proceedings

On 12 February 2015, the Munich Court of Appeal has decided, as was to be expected, that the motion by the Zschäpe defense to revoke the right of a private accessory prosecutor to join the proceedings was to be rejected. This means that her counsel Alexander Hoffmann will continue to represent her in the trial proceedings.

This decision was to be expected, the defense motion was a simple diversionary tactic. The defense did try to get rid of a victims’ counsel, but above all it tried to establish that only a few severely injured persons could be accepted as victims and thus to obscure the murderous dimension of the nail bomb attack in the Keupstraße. By claiming that a person who was in close proximity to the bomb and only by accident was not exposed to bomb fragments was not a victim of that bombing attack, the defense tried to push into the background the fact that this attack was directed against all residents of the Keupstraße.

The court simply stated that, when it allowed the private accessory prosecution, it had considered that the victim had been within the blast radius of the bomb and that therefore a conviction of Beate Zschäpe was possible. Whether or not this was proven by the evidence in court was simply without relevance for the decision – the Zschäpe defense had filled several pages with claims that the evidence did not bear out the facts considered by the court in its initial decision.