Potential gun merchants to the NSU refuse to testify.

After the sharp debates in court yesterday, the trial today was without significant developments. The two witnesses, twins and alleged former gang leaders in Thuringie, relied on the privilege against self-incrimination and refused to testify.

The court then heard several comments by parties on motions, followed by additional reports of secret service agencies, based on informer statements, on the accused and persons surrounding them.

The Wohlleben defense brought further motions for evidence, claiming that the Swiss gun dealer who had originally sold the Ceska murder weapon was involved in illegal gun deals.
At the end of the trial day, the presiding judge read out a decision denying motions by victims‘ counsel on informer „Corelli“ and the DVD entitled „NSU/NSDAP“. Continue reading →

Federal prosecution reneges on its promise to clear up the facts

This morning the court heard a witness on the robbery of a post office in Chemnitz. This was followed by the federal prosecution’s comments on victims counsel motions for evidence concerning secret service informer “primus”, Ralf Marschner as well as connections between the Nazi scene and the general criminal scene in Thuringia.

Prosecutor Diemer asked that the motions concerning Marschner be denied in their entirety, arguing that the factual claims made, if proven, would have no influence on the court’s judgment. Victims’ counsel pointed out that this was another clear case of the prosecution reneging on its promise to the NSU’s victims to clear up all relevant facts. Continue reading →

Challenge for alleged bias rejected, Secret service reports introduced.

The trial began at 1pm today as the court needed additional time to deal with the challenge for alleged bias brought against the court by the Wohlleben defense last week. Unsurprisingly, that challenge was rejected as unfounded.

The presiding judge then posed further questions to accused Zschäpe, which will be answered by her counsel at some later time.

Topics include her contacts with attorney Eisenecker, brokered by Tino Brandt, Ralf Wohlleben and Carsten Schultze, the uses to which the money made during the robberies was put, a meeting during which Holger Gerlach was given money and in return provided a health insurance card for Zschäpe, a visit by Gerlach to the Zwickau apartment, as well as the question whether Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt had access to motorbikes. Continue reading →

„There is nothing left up here but air“ – further testimony of a witness from the criminal scene in Jena does not reveal anything relevant

Today the court continued to question a witness from the criminal scene in Jena who had begun his testimony a few weeks ago (see the report of 16 February 2016). This time he brought his counsel with him, a lawyer currently also defending an accused from the Nazi scene in Thuringia.

As last time, his testimony was a mixture of Gangster war stories and failures to remember. Of the latter, some seemed like attempts to evade the court’s questions, but some seemed quite real – when the witness stated that “there is nothing left up here but air”, it was not hard to believe him.

Continue reading →

Motion by the Wohlleben defense to suspend the trial: much ado about very very little. And: court asks Zschäpe additional questions, this time concerning Holger Gerlach.

Those who had hoped that the court would conduct the trial with a bit more vigor after the Easter break were due for a disappointment: The court again interrupted the trial shortly after 1 pm, without having heard any witnesses, and also canceled the trial day tomorrow.

This was due to a motion by the Wohlleben defense, brought before the Easter break, for suspension of the trial: During the search of Wohlleben’s apartment in 2011, police had found and photographed a T-shirt clearly showing his National Socialist ideology – under the heading of “Railway Romanticism”, it shows train tracks leading to the concentration camp Auschwitz.
The prosecution had only entered a printout of this photo into the case file a few weeks ago. The defense now moved that the trial against Wohlleben be suspended, i.e. interrupted and started anew later on, arguing that the case file was incomplete. The court at first denied the motion, but after a motion to reconsider it decided to provide printouts to the defense right away and interrupt the trial for one week. Continue reading →

Zschäpe’s statement falling further apart, Wohlleben defense engaged in obstruction, and the court opting for Easter vacation

Today the court first heard two additional witnesses concerning the NSU’s robberies. One of them used the opportunity to make a short statement in court: he would have wished for an official apology also to the surviving victims of the NSU for the many shortcomings in the investigation – as victim of a bank robbery, he had not heard anything in that regard. Zschäpe defense attorneys Heer and Stahl bristled at this statement and asked the presiding judge to interrupt.

The court next heard a police officer whose statement further calls into questions Zschäpe’s statements. Continue reading →

Combating conspiracy theories in the courtroom, and further stories from the Zschäpe defense

The court began with the testimony of several police officers concerning the guns found in the Frühlingsstraße apartment and in the mobile home in Eisenach.

Their testimony helped rebut conspiracy theories concerning the NSU, such as the claim that no brain matter had been found next to the dead bodies of Böhnhardt and Mundlos, showing that they had been murdered elsewhere and placed in the mobile home: answering a question from the Wohlleben defense, a technician with the criminal police answered that there had been “lots of brain matter and lots of blood” next to the bodies. Continue reading →

On the NSU video and the NSU’s newspaper archive

Today the court heard two federal police detectives inter alia on the production process of the NSU video and on an archive found in the Frühlingsstraße apartment containing newspaper clippings concerning the murders and bomb attacks of the NSU.

The first detective was able, despite several attempts at interruption by the defense and despite rather scatterbrained questioning by the presiding judge, to show that the video was prepared in several periods between May of 2006 and November of 2007. Among other steps, in June of 2006, i.e. before the murder of police officer Michèle Kiesewetter and the attempted murder of her colleague, a hand was drawn into the video which fired a shot at a police officer. His colleague reported on her investigations concerning an archive containing several newspaper articles on the NSU’s crimes. Continue reading →

Further statement of accused Carsten Schultze

Today the court first heard two federal criminal police detectives who were part of the team that searched the mobile home in Eisenach in which Böhnhardt and Mundlos had killed themselves. The witnesses found several weapons, including a machine pistol. Another colleague of today’s witnesses, who found several more guns, will testify next week.

The presiding judge then gave the floor to accused Schultze for additional statements. Schultze had already made a detailed statement – albeit one seriously downplaying his own role – at the beginning of the trial (see the reports of 4 June 2013, 5 June 2013, 11 June 2013, 12/13 June 2013, 18 June 2013, 19/20 June 2013 and 10 October 2013). Now he wished to make an additional statement after several former “comrades” of his, particularly from the youth organization of the Nazi party NPD, the “Young National Democrats” (JN), had testified. Continue reading →