Once more on the Keupstraße bombing attack, and more on secret service officer Temme

The first witness today was another victim of the nail bomb attack in the Keupstraße in Cologne. At the time of the explosion, he was in the travel office of his father in the Keupstraße. He was lucky to remain uninjured since a delivery van was parked between him and the bomb – the van caught several dozen nails. The two expert witnesses, who had already presented clear and convincing reports on the deadly danger emanating from the bomb (see the report of [link] 11 February 2015), confirmed those reports and supplemented them with regard to the witness of today and other Keupstraße witnesses who had testified in the last months.

In the afternoon, the court heard another colleague of secret service officer Temme, a Mr. Hess who in 2006 was the officer responsible for “protection of official secrets”. He, too, had talked on the phone to Temme several times after the murder of Halit Yozgat in Kassel, at a time when Temme was suspect in the proceedings concerning that murder. These conversations were tapped by the police. In the first conversation, Hess said verbatim: “And I tell everybody, um, if you know that something like that happens at some place, please don’t pass by that place.” Today, he claimed that his had not meant that Temme had known of the murder in advance, but his explanations were far from convincing. Accordingly, presiding judge Götzl asked several follow up questions, summing up his thoughts as follows: “If the person in question knows that there will be a murder there, then the advice [not to go to that place] is sound.”

The rest of his phone calls with Temme also showed that supporting Temme and the secret service was the only thing that was important for him, while the murder investigation – in which Temme was still a suspect – was without any importance. Accordingly, he counseled Temme to say “as close to the truth as possible” in talking to the police. Attempts by the criminal police to get the secret service to “cease its clearly visible policy of supporting the suspect” were blocked by Hess, who still today tried to justify the actions of the secret service supporting Temme.
After questioning by presiding judge Götzl, Hess was questioned by victims’ counsel until well after 5 p.m. This questioning showed once more that the “wall of silence” built by the secret service towards the police is being upheld until this day. One clear example is Hess’ explanation of why he had refused to allow the police to question the informers “led” by Temme: “I just felt that they did not have enough facts. The police investigation was stalled, and after all the investigation [against Temme] was later discontinued.” Of course, what’s entirely missing in this statement is any realization that it was precisely the lack of support by the secret service which caused the investigation to stall, that this policy confirmed Temme’s resolution to remain silent.
Earlier in the day, parties had made several motions for the taking of evidence. One motion by victims’ counsel aims at showing that the gasoline used by Beate Zschäpe to set fire to the NSU flat in the Frühlingsstraße in Zwickau in 2011 had been bought just one week earlier at a gas station in Zwickau.

The Wohlleben defense continues to follow its thesis that Wohlleben had not been the “central figure” among supporters in Jena and moved that additional Nazi witnesses be heard. Inter alia, an earlier leading cadre of the “Thuringia Home Guard” will allegedly state that Wohlleben tried to arrange a live interview with the three who had gone underground at a time when they had already committed the first of their violent crimes and that he had always argued against violence as a political strategy. Also, the defense wants to call a German gun owner who allegedly bought guns illegally from the owner of the gun shop from which the murder weapon Ceska was also bought. The defense is obviously aware that even if the witnesses testify as claimed, this does not change the massive body of evidence concerning the provision of the gun by Wohlleben and Schultze, Wohlleben’s knowledge of the ideology of the trio and their propensity towards violence, as well as his own ideology. The defense is grasping at straws.