Another concrete statement by Zschäpe shown to be untrue.

The only witness today was a federal criminal police detective and expert witness for “identification of persons based on photographs”. She had compared a photograph of a man accompanying Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt during their 2006 summer vacation with pictures of accused Holger Gerlach. In painstaking detail, she explained that “with a probability bordering on certainty” the two pictures showed the same man.

Her testimony is relevant as it shows another answer of Zschäpe’s to the court’s questions to be untrue: Zschäpe had claimed not to have met Gerlach after 2004, in particular not to have been on vacation with him. This statement – one of very few factual statements amenable to a factual check-up – has thus also proven to be untrue. The court has accordingly made another step on the way to a judgment of conviction.

The court again proved its total unwillingness to clear up the shared responsibility of state organs for the NSU murders when it denied the motion for reconsideration brought by victims’ counsel regarding the files which had been destroyed by the federal domestic secret service in “Operation Confetti“ and since reconstructed (see the report of 02.06.2016).

The final two trial days before the court’s summer break will be Monday and Tuesday, 1 and 2 August 2016.