Counsel for the Taşköprü family: two strong statements and a ludicrous defense pleading

The first two closing statements today were held by Andreas Thiel and Gül Pinar on behalf of family members of Süleyman Taşköprü, who had been killed by the NSU in Hamburg in 2001.

Andreas Thiel’s moving statement showed the immeasurable suffering caused to the family by the murder of their brother, son and father – Süleyman Taşköprü’s daughter was two years old at the time of his death. Thiel quoted Taşköprü’s father, who had found his dying son in the shop and blamed himself for having left shortly before to buy some olives: “I put his head on my lap, touched his face. He tried to say something, but he couldn’t. I tried to render first aid, but I couldn’t. […] If I had known that the murderers were there, I would have gone back, no matter what would have happened to me.”

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Further closing statements by victims’ counsel, inter alia on Andreas Temme

Today the court first heard the closing statements of counsel to the Yozgat family and of Halit Yozgat’s parents, who addressed the court in person.

Counsel Alexander Kienzle dealt in detail with the role of Hessian secret service officer Andreas Temme, who was present in the internet shop when Halit Yozgat was killed, and who claims to have neither heard anything nor noticed Yozgat’s dead body. Kienzle noted that Temme had been tasked with investigating the series of murders then called “kebab killings” a few weeks prior to the murder. He also presented all the ways in which the secret service had tried to block the murder investigation, attempts justified by reference to a need to “safeguard sources”, a need which was paramount and trumped a “mere murder investigation”.  Continue reading →

More closing statements from victims and their counsel.

Today Antonia von der Behrens wrapped up her closing statement. In the first part delivered last week, she had assembled a large number of facts to a mosaic proving her two central theses: the NSU was surrounded by a large network of secret service informers, and the secret service had a large body of information about the group’s members and their whereabouts, but several times failed to pass on this information, causing the police to fail to apprehend them and thus prevent further murders.

Today, Antonia von der Behrens turned to the time after the NSU’s self-uncovering in 2011 and considered not only the secret service, but also the federal prosecution. Continue reading →