On Enrico Theile’s strategy as a witness

The first witness today was a federal criminal police detective who had questioned witness Enrico Theile. According to the indictment, Theile was involved in providing the Ceska pistol to “the Three”. In his testimony in court, Theile, as many Nazi witnesses before him, had answered evasively and claimed not to remember anything (see the reports of 28 April and 2 July 2014). Now the detective who had questioned him reported on Theile’s police interview.

Above all, his testimony today concerned one sentence contained in the minutes of that interview which Theile claimed not to have uttered: When asked why, after the uncovering of the NSU, he had been afraid of being arrested, Theile had answered that this was because “all the weapons had come from Müller.” According to the indictment, Theile had received the weapon from Müller and passed it on, via Länger, to the proprietor of the Nazi shop “Madleys”, who then gave the gun to Wohlleben and Schultze. The witness today confirmed that Theile had made the statement exactly as contained in the minutes. In addition, it became clear that Theile had lied from the very beginning, especially as to his knowledge concerning the Ceska pistol. Theile’s claims not to have had anything to do with the sale of the gun are not believable at all, his statement in court is an obvious case of perjury.

The older brother of André and Maik Eminger – who in contrast to his brothers is not active in the Nazi scene – relied on his right, as brother of an accused, to refuse to testify. In his statement to the police, he had tried to downplay his brothers’ Nazi activities.

On the investigation against Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt in Jena and on the house searched on 26 January 1998

According to the court’s time schedule, the testimony of Jürgen Dressler, a former detective of the Thüringen criminal police “state security division”, was supposed to take only one hour; Thomas Rothe (29.07.2014) was to continue his testimony afterwards. However, the testimony of Dressler – who was head of the investigative team “Tex” which had conducted an investigation against Mundlos, Zschäpe, Böhnhardt and other members of the “Kameradschaft Jena” concerning several fake bombs deposited in public places – ended up taking until shortly after 4 pm, Rothe was again sent home without having testified.

Dressler took over from the previous investigative team “Rex” the investigations concerning various fake bombs and letter bombs; he built the work of his team “Tex” on the basis of his predecessor’s results. While “Rex” had been tasked with investigating not only individual crimes, but also the structure of the militant right wing scene, the latter task was simply dropped when “Tex” took over.

The investigation was directed against members of the “Kameradschaft Jena” based on the obvious political motives behind the crimes as well as several concrete clues. “Tex” proposed that the prosecutor’s office consider broadening the investigation to include the charge of membership in a criminal organization, but this was not taken up.

The investigators felt that the perpetrators had to have a secret workshop somewhere and wanted to shadow Uwe Böhnhardt in order to find that workshop. However, due personnel shortages the police were only able to conduct surveillance for three days, without any result. They noticed, however, that the Thüringen domestic secret service also had Böhnhardt under surveillance. Dressler asked the service whether they could shadow Böhnhardt and, if they found the workshop, to provide the results to the police in a form that could be used in court. Shortly thereafter, the service provided a classified report naming a specific garage, but refused Dressler’s requests that the report be declassified. Dressler then wrote his own report stating the results of the surveillance as if they were the results of police work. On this basis, the court issued search orders for the garage.

The search was very badly prepared. Dressler, the lead detective, was away on training. The prosecutor in charge of the investigation had ordered the police not to take any further investigative steps without his say-so, but then he was not to be reached on the day of his search and neither, at first, was his replacement. The officers conducting the search did not even have the necessary tools to open a padlock and had to ask the fire brigade for support. This led to another garage close to the Böhnhardts’ apartment being searched before that containing the bomb workshop. The first garage also contained Uwe Böhnhardt’s car, with which he simply drove away unhindered by the police. Meanwhile, the police waited for the fire brigade to open the second garage, where they found bombs and associated material, several Nazi publications, many of whom Zschäpe had apparently subscribed to, and further documents such as lists of addresses.

It was on this basis that arrest warrants were drawn up for Böhnhardt, Mundlos and Zschäpe, who had gone underground in the meantime, on 28 January 1998. The search for them, as is well known, was unsuccessful even despite concrete clues that they had gone to Chemnitz. The extensive list of addresses found in the garage was not used for the investigations after the federal criminal police had deemed it “without relevance”.
What must strike observers as peculiar is that the secret service insisted that the surveillance report remain classified in the face of repeated insistence by Dressler that it be declassified – after all, what specific interest was to be served by keeping secret the results of a simple surveillance? What’s more, the garage was part of a complex surrounded by fences and with very limited lines of sight from the outside, making it hard to imagine how a simple surveillance would have led to finding the precise garage. One possible explanation is that the findings were in fact based not on surveillance, but on statements of an informer very close to “the Three”. Dressler did not want to confirm this possibility today, but he too could not find another explanation for the insistence of the secret service.

The Zschäpe and Wohlleben defense objected to the court using Dressler’s testimony regarding the objects found in the search, basing this objection on the fact that Dressler had, in his report, presented the results of the secret service report as the product of police work.

6 August 2014. On the murder of Halit Yozgat: massive obstruction of the police investigation by the domestic secret service. And: Temme knows more than he admits.

This last trial day before the summer break was taken up by the testimony of two police detectives from Kassel who had been summoned based on a request by victims’ counsel for the Yozgat family.

Their testimony showed, on the one hand, that the domestic secret service massively obstructed the police investigation. This was especially the case as concerns the informers working for secret service agent Temme, who was present at the murder scene and a murder suspect. The police now wished to interview his informers. The secret service denied this, but offered that the informers could be interview by the secret service, with police officers present under the guise of working for the service as well. The police did not take them up in that offer since such such an interview would be totally worthless in a court of law. The secret service also stated that there was no reason to dismiss Temme, but rather reason to believe that he would soon be working for the service again – this at a point in time when Temme was accused in a murder investigation and when it was clear that he had lied about what he had seen at the murder scene. The secret service obviously cared more about protecting its agent and a few informers than it cared about solving a series of murders.

The detectives‘ testimony also showed that Temme had seen more of the murder of Halit Yozgat than he admitted to the police or later in court. One officer reported on a “cognitive interview” a psychologist had conducted with Temme in order to uncover “buried” memories. This interview had not let to anything, however, and the psychologist had felt that Temme had not really cooperated.

Most importantly, however, it became clear that Temme had, already on Monday morning after the murder, told a colleague that the murder weapon had already been used in several other murders. This, however, is a fact which he could not have gotten from the press – which only reported on the Ceska pistol Monday afternoon – or from police officers – to whom he had talked only after talking to his colleague. As summarized by counsel for the Yozgat family, there are only two possible explanations for his behavior: either he witnessed the murder and saw more than he is willing to admit – or he has inside knowledge because he was involved in the crime. The court will have no choice but to investigate this issue more deeply in the coming weeks.

The trial will continue on 4 September.

Lies and Trivialization, Part 9 – Jürgen Länger

Witness Jürgen Länger was questioned today. Like a number of witnesses before him, he was accompanied by Nazi lawyer Jauch. According to the indictment, Länger received the Ceska pistol used for the NSU murders from Theile, who testified a few weeks ago, and sold it to witness Schultz, proprietor of scene shop “Madley’s”. At first, Länger stated that he wished to outright refuse to testify as there was an ongoing investigation against him. Defense counsel for Zschäpe and Wohlleben supported him: his acts according to the indictment fulfilled the actus reus for aiding and abetting murder, Wohlleben’s attorney Klemke stated, and the mens rea was an “open field.” Of course, this is all the more the case for his client Wohlleben, who according to the evidence presented so far (see the report of 3 July 2014) not only provided the weapon to Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt via co-accused Zschäpe, but who was also much closer to them in ideology than Länger.

The court disagreed and had the witness report on the provision of the weapon to Schultz. Länger denied having done so, just as he had done in his interview with federal criminal police. He claimed that Schultze was only a casual acquaintance; as to Theile, he had known him for a while, but had only come into closer contact within the last two years: “now we’re connected by the NSU.”

Länger tried to present himself as victim of the press and of federal police, as a “politically neutral” person who had taken part in Nazi marches, but also in left wing demonstration, seeking fun and adventure. Neither he himself nor Theile, Länger claimed, had had anything to do with guns. The presiding judge read parts from Theile’s police interviews, from files found on his hard drive etc. which let things appear in a totally different light – according to these documents, Länger was part of the “old right wing scene” in Jena, had Nazi documents on his computer, stated that maybe Theile had had something to do with guns. Theile prevaricated: other witnesses were lying, the police had simply invented answers in the police interviews, etc. When confronted with chat protocols dating from 2011 in which he had written things like “Sieg H…”, he tried to claim that his chat partner was from Austria and that was just the way people did things there.

Through persistent questioning, victims‘ counsel were able to clear up certain details, and this despite attempts by Wohlleben defense attorney Klemke who tried to torpedo the questioning with nonsense objections.

While Länger had in the beginning claimed not to have known Uwe Böhnhardt or Uwe Mundlos, to never have been part of the Nazi scene in Jena, and to never have had anything to do with guns, it became clear in the end that he was closely connected to members of the “Thuringia Home Guard” since the early 1990s and that he had been found in possession of a gun at a demonstration. His computer inter alia contained a video of a Nazi soccer tournament including André Kapke, Uwe Böhnhardt and accused Holger Gerlach. It seems likely that Länger also personally knew the other known members of the NSU. The existing clues pointing to the Ceska taking its way from Switzerland via Theile, Länger and Schultz to Wohlleben and Schultze were thus strengthened rather than weakened by his testimony. It remains to be seen whether Länger will be successful with his prevarications or whether he, too, will have to expect an investigation for perjury.

The Wohlleben defense requested that Länger be asked to swear an oath given the “decisive importance” of his statement – small wonder given that Länger is the only one who disputes the statements by Schultz and accused Schultze that it was Wohlleben who got the gun for “the Three.” However, as stated by the federal prosecution in its statement, Länger’s statement will hardly prove to be decisive for the simple reason that it is totally unbelievable. The court decided not to require an oath from Länger since witnesses who are suspected of involvement in the crimes charged in the indictment may not be put under oath in any event.
After his testimony, Länger showed once more that he is not as harmless and apolitical as he tried to present himself in court: he verbally attacked a journalist who had found out his home address, threatened him with consequences if he ever showed up in Jena again. Länger was accompanied by a man who also threatened that “you always meet twice in life” – and who, in leaving, gave his name as “Rosemann” – in all likelihood, this was Sven Rosemann, an old friend of Länger’s who was already active in the Nazi scene in Thuringia when the “Thuringia Home Guard” was founded and who was known to be particularly dangerous given his affinity for guns.

Once more concerning „Blood & Honour“ Chemnitz

The trial began later today to await the decision of the other chamber concerning the challenge brought by Zschäpe and Wohlleben against the judges. Unsurprisingly that chamber rejected the challenges as unfounded.

The court then heard the last bit of testimony by a police officer concerning the questioning of Thomas Starke, “Blood & Honour” activist from Chemnitz. The officer today reported on a DNA profile found in the Frühlingsstraße apartment which had raised the possibility that one of Starke’s sons had been present in that apartment, which had led to another police interview with Starke. The DNA evidence was later disproved, meaning that the subject of today’s testimony is without any importance for the result of this trial. Defense counsel for Zschäpe and Wohlleben nonetheless wasted over half an hour on questions concerning the conduct of the police officers in interviewing Starke.

Now that all of Starke’s statements to the police have been introduced into the trial, victims’ counsel made a concluding comment on his statements, stressing the very close relationship between Zschäpe and the two Uwes as described by Starke, the fact that “the Three” had been given support, including provision of explosives, by many “Blood and Honour” activists both before and after going underground. They concluded that, at least as far as the time before their move to Zwickau is concerned, the NSU can be described as a partner, if not a part, of the “Blood & Honour” network. The statement is available, in the German original, here.

The final witness this week was a detective from the federal criminal police who had talked to the NSU’s neighbor in the Frühlingsstraße in Zwickau. The old lady’s health has taken a dramatic turn for the worse after the fire such that she is not available for questioning anymore, accordingly the court has now turned to questioning those officers who had talked to her. According to the evidence presented until now, she was put severely endangered by the fire and the explosion caused by Zschäpe, the testimony heard today fits into this picture.

Witness testimony: Violent acts by Beate Zschäpe already in 1996

Today two witness from Jena testified on an attack by Beate Zschäpe in 1996. Zschäpe pushed one of them to the ground, leading to a broken ankle. She then sat on the young woman’s back and forced her to insult herself. Zschäpe accused the witness of having insulted her earlier – probably based on an earlier encounter with a friend of the witness who looked much like her. Zschäpe was accompanied by another young woman with a Skinhead haircut – most likely Jana J., former best friend of André Kapke’s (see the reports of 13 March 2014 and 16 April 2014). One of the two witnesses stated that Zschäpe had been described by others as very violent and unpredictable.

While the witness statements varied with regard to certain details – which is hardly surprising given that the attack was 18 years ago, their statements as to the general sequence of events is very believable. The woman who was attacked in particular visibly took pains to give a balanced testimony and to differentiate between what she remembered and what she had put together in the meantime. Attempts by Zschäpe’s defense to raise doubts as to the identification of Zschäpe were unsuccessful.

Wohlleben defense attorney Klemke meanwhile provided defense mostly for the Nazi scene and tried to insinuate that daily violence had been used both by Nazis and by the left in Jena. The witnesses, however, remembered things quite differently – it was they and their friends who had lived in constant fear of attacks by the Nazi scene, which was very strong in Jena.
At the end of the trial day, victims’ counsel for the Yozgat family moved that two high ranking officials from the German interior ministry be summoned as witness for the fact that they had followed the in-court testimony of Andreas Temme, formerly of the Hessian domestic secret service, on behalf of the ministry. If this proves to be true, there is a clear danger of undue influence being put on the testimony of later witnesses, particularly from the secret service and other agencies.

Zschäpe’s challenge against the court – much ado about nothing.

Today’s trial day was largely without concrete results:

The testimony of Thomas Rothe, one of the earliest supporters of “the Three” among Blood and Honour activists from Chemnitz, had to be interrupted again and will continue on a later trial day. Rothe kept emphasizing that “all that” was 14 years ago and that he had not noticed much in any event – on the other hand, he also admitted that he had helped organize “two, three concerts” on behalf of Blood and Honour. The presiding judge read out statements from a former police interview of Rothe’s and commented that “this was basically a lie.” It will be interesting to see how his testimony continues.

The court then interviewed a judge of the Federal Court of Justice who had interviewed Matthias Dienelt, who had rented the NSU apartments in Zwickau for the NSU when Dienelt was imprisoned on remand. The Zschäpe defense used the opportunity to show that they are willing to defend their client “by any means possible” (as reported in the daily “Süddeutsche Zeitung”) – including challenges for alleged bias which they must know have a snowball’s chance in hell of being successful. The presiding judge had read out large parts of the minutes of the interview and had the witness confirm that this was what had been said. He had not read out the entire interview, however, and the defense claimed that two of the parts not read out had been exculpatory. This, the defense claimed, showed him to be biased against the defense, and since the other members of the court had not asked the witness about these parts either, the same applied to them. Now, regardless of what one may think of the presiding judge’s habit of reading out large parts of the respective minutes to witnesses and having them “confirm” them, claiming that he shows bias by not reading out the entirety of the minutes is more than far-fetched – after all, it is precisely the task of defense counsel to ask those exculpatory questions which they deem the court has missed. Thus this challenge was not useful for anything but “clearing the air” within the Zschäpe defence.

The decision on the challenge will come from another chamber of the court. Meanwhile, the trial and with it the questioning of the witness continued. One would have expected the defense to use this opportunity to show in what way Dienelt’s statements to the witness had been exculpatory – instead, they got lost in vague statements and questions regarding the difference between “radical right-wing” and “extreme right-wing” thought and speculations regarding the decisions of the witness back in 2011.

The testimony of Maik Eminger, twin brother of accused André Eminger and like him long-time activist in the Nazi scene, was of much shorter duration: as brother of an accused, he may refuse to testify, a right which he invoked. Eminger did, however, make a political statement earlier, by appearing in the court building wearing a T-Shirt stating “Brüder schweigen” (Brothers remain silent) – an allusion to his right to refuse to testify, but also a quote from a Waffen-SS song and a self-description of murderous Nazi terrorist group “The Order” from the United States. Victims’ counsel brought this fact to the attention of those in the courtroom, despite attempts by the defense to immediately shut down those comments.

Lies and Trivialization, Part VIII – Andreas Rachhausen

The trial day with a report by the presiding judge that the witnesses summoned for the morning had called and told him that he would not appear – he had become lightheaded and would have to visit a pub. Götzl recounted this phone call in a rather jocular manner, which was also how it was taken up in the media. However, there is a serious background to it: the witness used to be a member of a criminal youth gang together with Uwe Böhnhardt. After he had talked to the police, he was involved in a car accident and the rest of the group left him lying severely injured and did not offer any help. When he did survive and was brought to the hospital, he was threatened by the rest of the group. It seems that he still suffers from serious anxiety when confronted with this past.

The court next heard witness Andreas Rachhausen, one of the leaders of the “Thuringia Home Guard” (Thüringer Heimatschutz, THS) besides Tino Brandt. Like Brandt, Rachhausen also sold information to the domestic secret service, albeit in a somewhat less institutionalized role. The files contain only two “meeting reports” concerning these activities – as of now it is not known whether there are further reports, whether reports may have been destroyed.

Rachhausen appeared with his lawyer, right wing attorney Jauch, who had himself been summoned to testify on 8 July 2014.

Rachhausen was first questioned by presiding judge Götzl for several hours and claimed that the THS had been more or less a front, that there had been no relevant structures, that he had only seen a small number of THS meetings in the “Heilsberg” pub which consisted mostly of drinking. He also claimed to have hardly known the accused, Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos and to have had no contact to Nazis outside Germany. He admitted to having towed a car on behalf of Wohlleben and Kapke, but claimed to not have known any details. This was in fact the car used by “the Three” in going underground.

Later, upon intense questioning by victims’ counsel, Rachhausen had to admit that he had been filmed by German TV magazine “Spiegel-TV” during paramilitary exercises (so-called “Wehrübungen”) and urban combat training with Nazis from Böhnhardt’s clique. He had also worked in the “Heilsberg” pub at the time when the THS meetings were going strong, meaning that he was present at practically all such meetings. In 1992, he was one of the organizers of a “Rudolf Hess-march” in Rudolstadt, which was attended by 1800 Nazis from all over Germany and all of Europe. When he was wanted for aggravated assault, he fled to Belgium, the US and Denmark, where he found refuge with Nazi cadre and Auschwitz denier Thiess Christophersen.

Rachhausen stated that he had told Brandt that he worked for the secret service. Generally, it had been known in the scene that, “whenever four people were sitting together, two of them were working for the secret service”. However, this had been no problem as he had only told the service banalities.

Rachhausen’s questioning will be continued on a later trial day.

What became clear during the entirety of his testimony so far was that he lied in order to downplay his role in the THS as well as the importance of the THS generally. However, it also became clear that the Nazi scene in Thüringen had experience with people going underground when wanted by the police and that, from 1992 at the latest, German Nazis were well-connected nationwide and globally. It became obvious that “armed resistance” was being discussed, trained and used as a propaganda vehicle via the media. The Nazis thus used violence in a two-fold way: on the hand by means of individual attacks, on the other hand through intimidation by means of public announcements via the media or stickers etc.

Years before the first NSU murder, the use of weapons against political enemies was thus a normal topic for the Nazi scene in Thuringia and the THS. The secret service knew this and paid important protagonists large sums of money, but was only given useless information.

The trial day on 24 July, which would have consisted of the continued testimony of Thomas Gerlach, was canceled. The court has received several dozen binders containing the files of a “criminal organization” investigation against the Hammerskins as well as the files of an investigation against Gerlach charging him with weapons crimes. These files, which had only arrived at the court last week, will have to be viewed by all parties; on their basis, the court will have to decide whether Gerlach may be able to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination.

„We have hardly ever met such nice people, we thought they would not hurt a fly…”

After Zschäpe’s request for new counsel was rejected, the court heard two young women who spent their family summer vacations in the years 2007 to 2011 at the Baltic Sea with Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt. Both witnesses stated that all three had been very nice, friendly and helpful to them. The families and their “Ossis” (a colloquial term for people from the former German Democratic Republic) had turned into an ever closer vacation community, there had also been visits between the summers, Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt had visited and brought little presents.

“Lieschen” Zschäpe had played a particularly important role for the two young women as she had been easier to talk to about personal topics than their parents. This had been the case despite one of the two having a decidedly anti-fascist worldview which was also visible via “Antifascist Action”-patches on her bag. Both women were clearly heartbroken and devastated to realize that the three persons they had held so dear had committed such horrible crimes. One of them put her anger into the following words: “I still cannot understand this. I trusted them 100 percent, and now I have realized that they have done nothing but lie to me. I have asked myself whether they even really liked me or whether that was just as fake.”

What this testimony showed was not only that „the Three“ had, over the years, built a perfect disguise, but also that they had a need for personal contact to “normal people”. What is most interesting, however, is that the “völkisch” and racist ideology behind the NSU murders still allowed them to have close relationships to other “German people”, even those who were opposed to Nazis. In the midst of the “Volksgemeinschaft”, they behaved decently and friendly, their murderous anger and hatred were motivated by racist thought. In other words, the NSU did not consist of psycho murderers who had gone off the rails, but of clearly politically motivated Nazis.

By decision of 21 July 2014, the Court rejected the application by accused Zschäpe to be provided new counsel, holding that Zschäpe had not given sufficient reasons for such a step. After announcing the decision, the presiding judge immediately got back to business and called in the first witness for the day.