The court enters further documents into evidence, and it continues its strategy of denying all further elucidation of facts surrounding the NSU.
Today the court read out several documents contained in the case file. These included a short memo authored by a policeman who, in the summer of 1997, had seen Beate Zschäpe on the way to a meeting at the compound of Neo-Nazi and attorney Jürgen Rieger in Hetendorf.
Another document read out was a list, compiled after victims counsels’ motions on the possible scouting out of the synagogue in Berlin by members of the NSU (see the report of 26 October 2016), of Jewish institutions contained in the collection of addresses compiled by the NSU. This list contains more than 200 addresses of Jewish institutions. Given the well-known anti-Semitism of the NSU’s members, this is another document which tends to show that the NSU had made at least general plans to commit attacks against Jewish institutions, even if, according to what is known, such plans were not in fact carried out.
The court then continued its strategy of rejecting all motions aiming at a further elucidation of the facts surrounding the NSU. Inter alia, it rejected a motion which aimed to prove that contact officer “Görlitz” had lied to the court in reporting on his meetings with informer Carsten Szczepanski and had done so in order to cover up the fact that the secret service of Brandenburg had, to protect its source Szczepanski, foiled a concrete possibility to find out more about Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt, who had gone underground. The court stated that it found the statement made by Görlitz – who managed to appear even less reliable than even many witnesses from the Nazi scene (see the reports of 1 July 2015, 29 July 2015, 2 March 2016 and 16 June 2016) – was fully believable and that it was irrelevant whether the secret service had in fact foiled a chance to find the three who had gone underground. This motion does not require or deserve further comment.
The trial will continue next Tuesday with further questions to expert witness Prof. Saß.