The Court has notified the parties that the trial days on 20 and 21 September 2017 have been canceled in order to be able to deal with additional challenges for alleged bias.
The trial will continue on Tuesday, 26 September 2017. It remains to be seen whether victims and their counsel will be able to begin their closing statements then
As could be expected, the Eminger defense today brought a challenge for alleged bias against all five judges. It did so before the start of the trial day, which therefore did not even begin.
The trial can only continue after a decision on this challenge has been reached. The court is currently planning to continue the trial next Wednesday – however, further delays may arise, e.g. if the Wohlleben defense brings its own challenge in the next few days. It is therefore not unlikely that the closing statements of victims and their counsel will be postponed to the week of 25 September.
On this first trial day after accused Eminger was detained, several family members visited the trial –his wife Susnan (who is herself accused of supporting the NSU) and two family members were among the members of the public watching the trial from the public gallery.
As expected, the court issued a detention order against Eminger as requested. Eminger will thus remain in Stadelheim prison.
The court thus held that Eminger is “strongly suspected” of all crimes he is charged with and that the expected sentence leads to a danger of absconding. In other words: the court will in all likelihood find Eminger guilty of all charges, including of aiding and abetting attempted murder for his involvement in the Probsteigasse bombing attack, and it will sentence him to a prison term that is at least in the vicinity of the twelve years requested by the prosecution.
This morning, the presiding judge gave notice to accused Eminger that the two counts of aiding and abetting robbery contained in the indictment could also be considered as aiding and abetting armed robbery in the judgment.
Prosecutor Dr. Diemer than concluded the closing statement with the concrete motions for sentences. The details will be available in the minutes which we will publish (in the German language) in a few days. Here, we will limit ourselves to the sentences the prosecution is asking for:
Today the federal prosecution concluded the main part of its closing statement – the only part remaining concerns the formal motions as well as the statements on the sentences, which prosecutor Dr. Diemer will bring on the next trial on 12 September.
Today his colleagues Greger and Weingarten summarized which crimes the accused are to be convicted of. The prosecution asked that they be convicted according to the indictment, with two slight changes in the legal characterization of the charges: as to Zschäpe, this mainy concerned the arson of the house containing the NSU apartment in the Frühlingsstraße, which according to the prosecution also fulfills the requirements for the crime of “inducing an explosion”. As to accused Eminger, the provision of two motor vehicles used in bank robberies constitutes not only aiding and abetting robbery, but aiding and abetting armed robbery, which carries a much higher sentence. The court will have to decide whether it will make a formal announcement to the accused that the charges could be thus re-characterized. Continue reading
The trial day began with a protest in the courtroom: before prosecutor Weingarten could continue the prosecution’s closing statement, activists of the tribunal “dissolving the NSU complex” began reading out parts of the tribunal’s own indictment concerning the federal prosecution and throwing down tiny leaflets with the names of those indicted before the tribunal. The presiding judge interrupted the trial session and the court left the courtroom, there were no sanctions against the activists, who continued their protest in front of the court building for the rest of the day.