On Zschäpe‘s position in the NSU

Victim’s counsel Hoffmann and Pinar today requested that a forensic linguist be called to compare a propaganda letter written by the NSU and sent, together with sums of money, to various Nazi groups with a letter by Uwe Mundlos and a letter written by Beate Zschäpe to neo-Nazi Robin Schmiemann. The expert opinion could point to Zschäpe being co-author of the so-called NSU manifest – which would allow convicting her as a co-perpetrator of the NSU murders.

Several former neighbors of Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt from the Polenzstraße in Zwickau also testified. What was appalling about their testimony was that they all showed clear sympathy for Zschäpe, about whom they could not – or would not – „say anything bad“. It appears that the knowledge of Zschäpe’s involvement in the NSU murders has not reached these people – or has not touched them sufficiently to change their view of their former neighbor.

Andreas Schulz was supposed to testify today. He was proprietor, with Frank Liebau, of the Nazi shop „Medley“. He had stated to the police that he had provided the Ceska pistol to Wohlleben and Schulze.

Defence counsel for Wohlleben and Zschäpe moved that the witness be instructed that he has a right to refuse to testify. The court interrupted the trial several times for closed discussions. Finally, the witness was instructed that he had a right to refuse to testify since there was at least a preliminary suspicion of aiding and abetting murder. He stated that he wanted to talk to a lawyer, but did not have one present. The trial was interrupted again.

This may well backfire on the Wohlleben defence. The court will now likely hear the police officers who interrogated Schulz earlier. In these interrogations, he had incriminated both Wohlleben and Schultze; it is likely that the police officers will confirm this. Among other issues, Schulz had stated that Schultze had insisted on a silenced pistol from the get-go and that Wohlleben had been involved. The Wohlleben defence will now be unable to question the witness on these issues.

In the afternoon, victims’ counsel for the Yozgat und Kubaşik families brought several motions aiming at having the entire case file of the investigation against secret service officer Andreas Temme made part of the case file for the current proceedings and ultimately at illuminiating the acts of obfuscation by the Hessian secret service.

On how Holger Gerlach supported the NSU – and on how witness protections officers supported Holger Gerlach?

Today’s trial day showed again that the very tight time schedule set by the presiding judge is hard to keep when it comes to difficult issues. Of eight witnesses called today, four had to be sent home without testifying, namely Mandy Struck, Uwe Böhnhardt’s mother Brigitte Böhnhardt, the publisher of a Nazi fanzine who had received a circular from the NSU, and a police officer. Witnesses who did testify include three employees of rental car agencies where mobile homes used in NSU crimes had been rented, including the vehicle used for the bank robbery in Eisenach after which Böhnhardt and Mundlos died. When that vehicle had been picked up, a woman with black hair and a small child had been present, however witnesses were unable to conclusively identify anybody.

The afternoon session was dedicated to the testimony of Sylvia Scheidemantel, who had in 2005/2006 sold her health insurance card to accused Holger Gerlach for 300 €. This card was used for at least one doctor’s visit, very likely by Beate Zschäpe. Personal details of the witness were also used for several non-official ID papers – apparently the NSU had received very precise personal details.

Scheidemantel’s testimony again proved to be a tedious poking in the fog of pretend forgetfulness. Of course the witness had not given any thought to the use her insurance card might be put to, of course she had never had political discussions with either Gerlach or her husband, through whom she knew Gerlach. That these two were “comrades” was, of course, of no interest for her. And of course she had no recollection of having talked to her husband either before or after being interrogated by the police.

One interesting aspect of her testimony concerns a meeting with Gerlach in 2012. According to the witness, shortly after Gerlach had been released from detention, he had been brought to her home and picked up later by witness protection officers. “Gerlach called my husband. Besides us, Holger’s mother and Holger’s girlfriend were present. I mostly talked to [these two] and did not notice the discussion between the two [Gerlach and her husband Alexander Scheidemantel]. The witness protection officers brought him there and picked him up again later, two plainclothes police officers”, the witness related.

If this proves true, it would be a scandalous misconduct by witness protection officers to allow Gerlach to directly influence important witnesses against him. Victims’ counsel therefore moved that the court find out whether there are records of this event, to ask the officers involved for official statements and to call them as witnesses.

Lies and Trivialization, Part One

Frank Liebau and Jürgen Länger were called to testify today. From 1995 to 2007, Liebau was the proprietor of the “Medley” shop. It was in this shop that the silenced Ceska pistol was bought according to accused Schultze and another witness and that another pistol was bought for Wohlleben and the NSU according to accused Gerlach. The shop was an important meeting point given that it sold Nazi clothing, music encouraging violence and murder and everything else Nazi customers could hope for.

Liebau’s testimony went on for hours without him even giving one concrete answer. Whenever he did not want to say the truth or to conceal something, he would start to mumble almost incomprehensibly in a very broad Thuringian accent.
He stated that he had known Uwe Böhnhardt since his early youth and had been part of a common clique, but refused to remember what they had done. Uwe Mundlos and Ralf Wohlleben were known to him “in the same way”.

Another witness, Andreas Schulz, who is due to testify on 13 November, has stated that he had received the Ceska vom Länger and that Liebau had acted as a go-between. Liebau stated that he had visited Schulz about a week before the trial day – when asked about the content of their discussion, he again claimed not to remember. In earlier talks with Schulz, he claims to have said that he did not want to know anything. However, Schulz had told him that he had sold a firearm.

Liebau also claimed that the police officers writing the protocol of his police interrogation had written down lots of things he had not said, but that he had still signed that protocol in order to be done with the interrogation.

His testimony will continue on 13 November and will be a litmus test for the extent to which the presiding judge will allow a witness to dance on the edge between lying, claiming not to remember and generally not saying anything.

Länger has refused to testify since truthfully answering questions could lead to him being investigated as an accessory to murder. His testimony will continue on a later date; he will be accompanied by a lawyer.

Presiding judge Götzl complains about criticism of the police investigation

Today’s trial day saw many attempts by presiding judge Götzl to choke off critical questions by victims’ counsel directed at police officers. Again and again, he objected to such questions, arguing that they were without relevance to the judgment in this case. Victims’ counsel were nonetheless able to get most relevant questions in by repeating, rewording questions and generally being persistent.

First to testify was the former head of the Gotha police. He had headed the investigation after the bank robbery in Eisenach on 4 November 2011, and he had also linked that case with the fire in the Frühlingsstraße which had apparently been set by Zschäpe. He stated that he had been investigating a series of bank robberies and had suspected that another was planned for that Friday. He had therefore had police officers at the ready in Gotha and had set up checkpoints at certain strategically relevant positions. That was why the mobile home with Böhnhardt und Mundlos could be found. The witness had driven to the scene, had been the first to enter the mobile home and had seen the two dead bodies. The weapon stolen in Heilbronn during the murder of police officer Kiesewetter had been found and had provided the link to that crime. Inquiries with the car rental agency had led to Holger Gerlach and thus provided a link to the Nazi scene, accordingly he had been certain that this was not just a bank robbery.

The witness gave contradictory answer, however, when asked about the time he had identified Uwe Mundlos. After repeated questioning he stated that he had, already on 4 November, given the order that a missing person file on Mundlos be requisitioned. In the night of 4 November, the dead man had been identified as Uwe Mundlos by means of finger prints taken by pathologists. The witness was unable to explain why he had asked for the missing persons file already before the identification of Mundlos and in the absence of further clues leading to “the Three”. The suspicion thus remains that the police knew earlier than officially acknowledged that they were on the heels of Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt. The presiding judge continuously objected to questions on this issue – apparently he is trying to preserve the positive presentation of the investigation after 4 November 2011.

Two police detectives from Dortmund again proved a perfect example of the prejudiced way many German police officers think. Asked why the police had not investigated possible leads to Nazi perpetrators in the Kubaşik murder case – after all, this was the eighth in a series of what were clearly racist murders –, one of them answered that “the only connection that we could find was the Ceska pistol”. That all victims had been “foreigners” and that this could be a connection in providing a racist motive apparently had not even entered their mind – the sort of thinking that led to victims in all cases were considered in no other role than potentially somehow suspicious persons. Questions aiming at uncovering these inner prejudices were also objected to by the presiding judge, who apparently aims at keeping that issue out of the trial.

On the Kubaşik murder case

The testimony of Mehmet Kubaşik’s widow and daughter, Elif and Gamze Kubaşik, showed once again that police officers investigating these crimes not only dealt with families of the victims in an insensitive and inappropriate manner, but also that they did not even consider the possibility of a racist motivation. The day after the murder of Mehmet Kubaşik, the family apartment was searched using police dogs, and his daughter Gamze, 20 years old at the time, was asked about possible contacts to the PKK and furthermore about alleged affairs her father had had as well as other insulting suspicions against the murder victim that did nothing to further the investigation.

Olaf Klemke, defense attorney for Ralf Wohlleben, did everything he could to further his dislikeable image by trying to shift responsibility for the family’s traumatization to their Turkish neighbors.

A witness from Dortmund reported that shortly before the murder, she had seen two men next to Kubaşiks shop, one of them on bike, one on foot. She had been afraid of the men, whom she had described to the police as “Junkies or Nazis”.

A pathologist reported on a blood splatter analysis according to which the killers had first fired two shots at Mehmet Kubaşik, one of which had hit him in the eye. He went to his knees and two further shots were fired, one of which hit him.

Parties are eagerly awaiting the testimony, on Wednesday and Thursday, of persons from the surroundings of the Eastern German Nazi Scene who are suspected of having been involved in the acquisition of the murder weapon, the Ceska pistol. Some of them may refuse to testify since investigations against them are ongoing.

Also of interest will be the testimony of a high-ranking police officer called Menzel, concerning the “connection between the events on 4 November 2011 in Eisenach (mobile home [the site where the dead bodies of Mundlos and Böhnhardt were found]) and Zwickau (Brand Frühlingsstraße).” He will inter alia be asked which secret services were present shortly after the bank robbery in Eisenach.

Inter alia on the NSU videos

Today the court again considered several different aspects of the case.

The trial day started with two expert witnesses reporting on the Ismail Yaşas murder. According to them, this crime had been very similar to the other murders: First the killers shot their victim in the head; after he had fallen to the ground, they fired three more shots at him. The evidence leads one to assume that a silencer was again used and that the gun was fired from inside a plastic bag.

A police officer from Zwickau reported on calls to the emergency services after the fire in the Frühlingsstraße. There had been no such call from Zschäpe. The defense had claimed that Zschäpe had indeed reported the fire; they referred to a database entry showing a failed connection and claimed that this was her call. This question will likely require further evidence.

The next issue discussed was the videos in which the NSU claimed responsibility for their crimes. A federal investigator from Hamburg reported that the photos of Süleyman Taşköprü used in that video had been shot before other people had arrived at the crime scene, i.e. by the killers themselves.

Another federal investigator had dealt with the newspaper articles used in the video. Copies of these articles were also found in the Frühlingsstraße. Zschäpe’s finger prints were only found on articles not used in the video, but given that the articles were archived together, it must be assumed that she also knew of the articles used in the video. Also found in the rubble of the Frühlingsstraße were two earlier versions of the video, which contained music from Nazi rock band “Noie Werte” (“New Values”) – lead singer of that band is Steffen Hammer, an attorney and a former officemate of Wohlleben defence attorney Schneiders. These earlier videos were created in 2001 and showed all crimes committed until then. These videos already show the NSU logo, showing that the organization already existed at this time. A further document, created in 2007, was a so called “NSU letter” in which the NSU asked “comrades” for support in their fight.

The testimony of an expert witness on the murder weapons, in particular on the Ceska pistol, was not finished today – before continuing his testimony, the expert will send several photos to the court to be sent on to the parties.

On the evening of Wednesday, several victims’ counsel had issued a press release ([link] in German) on the topic of institutional racism. This was triggered by two emails sent by Joseph Wilfling, the lead investigator of the Munich murders, to a member of the parliamentary enquiry commission in the Bavarian parliament. In these mails, Wilfling insulted the parliamentarian and once again showed exactly the kind of mind-set that had led to the police conducting a very thoroughly one-sided and failed investigation over the span of several years.

On the murder of Mehmet Turgut

Today the court finally began to hear testimony on the murder of Mehmet Turgut in Rostock. Such testimony had been postponed several times, the last time due to the challenges of the Zschäpe and Wohlleben defenses claiming bias on the part of the judges. Several of the witnesses were police officers.

The crime scene investigator reported on his work, which seems to have been quite thorough. His conclusion: “They did not come in order to rob or anything, they only came to kill”

Several of his colleagues reported on the investigation, painting a picture similar to that known from several of the other murders: On the one hand, the police knew early on that the same Ceska pistol as in other murders had been used and thus that this crime was part of the murder series. Nonetheless, for a long time, the investigation was focused solely on alleged suspicion against the Turgut family and the family of the owner of the kebap shop where Turgut was killed. The lead investigator claimed that there had been no concrete leads concerning a xenophobic motive – in a police press release shortly after the murder, the police claimed to be able exclude this option at the moment.

The owner of the kebap shop, who found Mehmet Turgut in his last minutes very shortly after the murder, described in very concrete terms how the Turgut family, as well as he himself, had suffered after the killing. He had given up his shop and never set foot there again. He also described how he was interrogated for hours by the police, told time and time again that “he knew everything” about the motives, and generally treated like a suspect.

The court dismissed the motion brought by victim’s counsel Seda Basay that the case file of the investigation against Andreas Temme, officer of the domestic secret service, be incorporated into the case. The court claimed that these files were not relevant to the judgment to be passed in this case. This decision was widely hailed as unacceptable by victims’ counsel given that the importance of Temme as a witness in this case is evident. Seda Basay announced a statement for tomorrow.

Was Beate Zschäpe present at the Nuremberg crime scene?

The trial day began with the testimony of a witness who stated that she had seen Beate Zschäpe on the day of the murder of Ismail Yaşar in Nuremberg in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene. On a playground which was also very close to Yaşar’s kebap shop, she had seen two young men with bikes. Her description of the cyclists closely matches Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, in fact, when shown a picture of Mundlos years later, she stated that he looked at least very similar to the man she had seen. Today, eight years after the murder, the witness was unable to remember certain details, and she even declared some parts of the protocol of her first statement to the police to be wrong. However, the witness was very certain as far as the core of her statement, namely that she had seen Zschäpe and the two men, was concerned, and she was also able to explain in detail why she had remembered seeing them.

This testimony alone will not suffice to convict Zschäpe as a co-perpetrator of the murders. However, it is an important piece of evidence, along with others such as the witness from Dortmund who claims to have seen her shortly before the murder in Dortmund or the phone call from a Zwickau call box to the cell phone of the murderers in Munich.

The next witness was the owner of a car rental shop in Zwickau. He stated that Böhnhardt had rented several cars from him over a period of several years. Cars rented include vans for vacations as well as other cars for shorter periods of time. Police investigations had shown that the timing of these rentals coincided with the NSU’s crimes. Böhnhardt had given the name of Holger Gerlach and had presented a driver’s license in that name. Zschäpe had accompanied him several times.

Victims’ counsel for the Yozgat family moved that further investigations be conducted concerning Andreas Temme, officer of the domestic secret service: On a map of Kassel found in the wreckage of the burned down house in the Frühlingsstraße, there had been several marks representing potential targets for attacks. All such targets save one were extremely close to routes Temme routinely traveled on or to places he often visited. This motion shows again that the file of the investigation against Temme needs to be incorporated into this trial’s case file, as requested by victim’s counsel Seda Basay.

„These notes can only have been taken in the course of an observation at the crime scene“

Today’s trial day showed on the one hand how meticulously the NSU killers planned their crimes, on the other hand why the German police was incapable of uncovering the perpetrators.

The first witness was a police officer who had sifted through the wreckage of the burned down house in Zwickau. According to her testimony, Zschäpe had, in 2011, paid for an Eminger family vacation in Paris under her alias Lisa Pohl – either a birthday present for André Eminger or a thank you for renting vehicles which were presumably used for murders and bombing attacks.

Another police officer had evaluated maps and the like found in the wreckage. He had found that the attempt to burn the evidence had almost been successful as all documents had been singed. He had found substantial material in the form of maps, lists of addresses and other notes in particular as concerns Nuremberg, Munich, Kassel and Dortmund. A total of 267 potential targets had been scoped, including rooms associated to political parties (especially the Left Party), institutions of Muslim organizations, and housing and advice centers for refugee.

These notes can only have been taken in the course of an observation at the crime scene, over periods of time between four to eight weeks and 12 months. This again calls into question the assumption in the indictment that Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe acted alone – quite to the contrary, it seems impossible for them to have conducted observations of this scope. The evidence so far rather points to local Nazis having helped plan the murders.

One map of Nuremberg was also found on a hard drive found with accused Eminger.

An expert witness with the Bavarian police confirmed that the prepaid cell phone which was called from a public phone box in Zwickau shortly before the murder of Theodoros Boulgarides was at that time in the direct vicinity of the Munich crime scene – one further piece of evidence for Zschäpe’s direct involvement in the murders.

The various notes on the murders also show that the perpetrators had clear criteria in choosing their victims: the scenes had to be close to major roads, there had to be flight paths for cars and for bicycles, the victims had to be of Turkish origin and middle-aged. These commonalities were not a factor in the police investigation, however, as the police kept on looking for motives relating to the victims’ personal lives or families.

Thus the testimony of police officer Blumenröther again showed the extent to which the investigation was marked by prejudices and incompetence. The witness, now retired, had been lead investigator of the special investigation team “Theo” charged with investigating the murder of Theodoros Boulgarides. He stated that there had not been any clues regarding a racist murder – a slip of the tongue led him to refer to a “foreigner motive” given the series of murders of migrants. The victim’s family had kept floating the idea of a xenophobic motive, but there had, according to Blumenröther, simply not been any clues pointing in that direction.

The witness insisted on this point despite the fact that two men who had been in contact with convicted Nazi terrorist Martin Wiese and with Norman Bordin, another militant neo-Nazi, had been found at the crime scene directly after the murder. After all, the witness related, they had answered questions in a calm and cooperative manner and had admitted to having met Bordin and Wiese about ten times, but “only in private”. “One of them even said that he had a friend who was a Muslim”. This marked the end of the investigation of the Nazi scene. The special investigation team “Bosporus” in Nuremberg had received further information concerning the involvement of the two men in the Nazi scene, but the witness claimed that he had never received that information.

The trial day on Thursday was canceled since the only witness planned to testify on that day will not appear. The witness, a Swiss national suspected of having sold the Ceska pistol used in the murders, is subject of Swiss criminal proceedings for aiding and abetting murder and thus entitled to refuse to testify.