The end of the taking of evidence is drawing closer – very slowly. 

Some parties had forecast shortly before noon today that the court would conclude the taking of evidence this week: as expected, the court had rejected two motions by victims’ counsel on the involvement of the domestic secret service and the NSU support network (see the report of 5 July 2017). As to the challenge for bias against Zschäpe expert witness Prof. Bauer (see the report of 5 July 2017), the court had held that it was well-founded – a decision not even challenged by Zschäpe defense counsel Grasel. As to the conspiracy theory motion brought by the Wohlleben defense (see the report of 29 June 2017) that domestic secret service officer Temme had fired the shots that killed Halit Yozgat in Kassel, the court had done the necessary preparations for rejecting the motion: It had heard the testimony of an expert witness from the Bavarian criminal police, who stated that the gunshot residue found on Temme’s gloves could not only have been years old at the time, but also matched several different types of ammunition. Given that Temme had been a member of a gun club, these traces thus do not have any evidentiary value.  Continue reading →

More blocking and denying. And: Trial day tomorrow canceled.

Today’s trial again did not reveal much of any interest, but once again showed that the focus of the trial is much too narrow:

On the one hand, the federal prosecution remained true to its program of preventing all elucidation of the role of secret services and the Nazi network surrounding the NSU. Referring to press reports according to which an informer of the Hessian domestic secret service had talked about an organization called “National Socialist Underground Fighters” already in 1999, counsel for the Yozgat family had moved that his contact officer (to be named by the service) be heard as a witness and that the service’s files be consulted – after all, there is  a clear possibility that he referred to the organization later known as “National Socialist Underground”, and that this is of significance for the trial. Not so for prosecutor Weingarten, who seemed to have no doubts at all that the largely matching names could only be coincidental and that in any event, informer’s reports on the NSU in 1999 were wholly devoid of significance for the trial. Continue reading →