On assaults by neo-Nazis from Jena in the 1990s and on the believability of accused Schultze.

Today the court heard too witnesses to check a statement by accused Schultze. He had reported on an assault committed by several neo-Nazis from Jena on two people in the late 1990s. According to Schultze, among those involved in the assault was Ralf Wohlleben, who had later told him that he had “jumped on one guy’s head.” (see the report of [link] 11 June 2013). The court has now summoned as witnesses the others whom Schultze had named as having been involved.

The first witness, “Thuringia Home Guard” leader André Kapke’s younger brother (on his earlier statement in court see the report of 4 March 2015), stated that he did not remember such an incident. However, this does not have much relevance for Schultze’s statement as Schultze had never been sure that the witness had been involved, but had only named him as a “maybe”.
The second witness, who back then was more Nazi-Skin than Nazi “politician”, stated that it was quite possible that there had been such an attack. However, he did not have any concrete memories today – just “some images that have come up”. His memory was also quite poor with respect to other issues. And speaking of poor memories – on interesting aspect of his testimony, albeit one that will not be of much relevance to the judgment, was that large-scale consumption of Cannabis had marked the beginning of his exiting the Nazi scene.

Today’s witness statements can be summed up as having neither confirmed nor seriously called into queestion Schultze’s statement. Two more witnesses whom Schultze had named as having been involved are to testify in the next weeks.