Questioning of expert witness Prof. Saß finished

The head of the detention unit in Munich-Stadelheim had one interesting aspect to report regarding Beate Zschäpe: she regularly receives money transfers from a man in Munich. That same man is very active in social media, where he spreads propaganda against the “show trial” against Zschäpe, but also spreads hate speech against refugees and “foreigners” and other racist and Nazi content. Zschäpe has told the court that she does not wish to receive visits from that man, but seems to feel no compunction at all about accepting his money.

Other than that, the witness described Zschäpe as polite and unremarkable and stated that she did not have anything negative to say. Expert witness Prof. Saß confirmed that this does not change his expert opinion, but rather confirms it – he had already talked at length about Zschäpe’s “camouflage” abilities gained in the years in the underground.

The defense had no questions for the expert, accordingly the court ended the questioning of Prof. Saß. Zschäpe’s assigned counsel announced that they would bring a motion not to consider his opinion in evidence, but did not deign to state when they would do so.

As there is no program for tomorrow, the trial day tomorrow is canceled, the trial will continue on Tuesday, 7 March 2017. The court has, out of an abundance of caution, announced further trial dates in the months of September 2017 to January 2018. However, currently it does not seem that these will be needed – details will depend on further motions by the defense, the court having largely finished its own program for the trial.