The challenge brought by the Wohlleben defense against all judges for alleged bias was rejected \u2013 as was to be expected since it was simply based on a (likely willful) misunderstanding of the decision on which it was based. The court continued the trial \u2013 beginning, however, only at 1 p.m. and without giving any reasons for the delay.<\/p>\n
It first heard two witnesses concerning an NSU robbery of a post office in Zwickau in July of 2011. This crime was quite similar to the other robberies\u2013 tellers threatened with guns, customers entering the office sprayed with pepper spray, a loot of roughly 75,000 marks, severe psychological consequences for the postal workers still noticeable during their testimony in court. <\/p>\n
The court than called the witness going by the alias of \u201cRainer G\u00f6rlitz\u201d \u2013 to the surprise of the parties given that G\u00f6rlitz\u2019 testimony had been announced for the morning session, which had after all been cancelled. This marked the third appearance of G\u00f6rlitz, officer of the interior secret service of Brandenburg and former contact officer of Carsten Szczepanski, in the courtroom (on his previous appearances see the reports of\u00a01 July 2015<\/a> and 29 July 2015<\/a>, on those of Szczepanski the reports of\u00a03 December 2014 <\/a>and 13 January 2015<\/a>). During his last appearance on 29 July 2015, the court had seized documents G\u00f6rlitz had used to prepare for his testimony and brought with him into the courtroom.<\/p>\n G\u00f6rlitz\u2019 testimony would constitute a (continued) scandal \u2013 if only the public was not already used to the secret service strategy of trying to bury all relevant information.<\/p>\n First of all, it is obvious that the reason for the delay in starting the trial day was not that the court needed additional time to deal with the Wohlleben defense challenges, but that it had forgotten to decide on a victims\u2019 counsel motion which aimed to make files concerning Szczepanski, namely those documents used by G\u00f6rlitz and his colleague to prepare for their appearances in court and before the parliamentary enquiry, part of the case file. Before G\u00f6rlitz\u2019 testimony could begin, therefore, presiding judge G\u00f6tzl read out the decision denying this motion. Part of the reasoning:<\/p>\n \u201eThere are no reasons to believe that witness G\u00f6rlitz has not told the truth in court, in the sense that he has not told everything he knew.\u201d<\/p>\n G\u00f6rlitz \u2013 once more \u2013 disproved this statement to the utmost of his abilities today. These proceedings once more strengthened the impression that the Brandenburg secret service is doing all it can to keep from the public what kind of activities informer Szczepanski had engaged in with his contact officers. After all, Szczepanski was in close contact with members of Blood and Honour and Combat 18 in Germany and all over the world, after all he published a zine openly propagating armed resistance. If was someone in the relevant time was in a position to build up armed cells, it was Szczepanski.<\/p>\n Towards the end, G\u00f6rlitz\u2019 feigned memory loss and shear refusal to testify reached such a level that his testimony was not formally concluded today. The Wohlleben defense announced that it would bring a motion for the court to ask the secret service to allow G\u00f6rlitz to testify on additional matters; it remains to be seen whether they will make good on that promise. Challenge for bias rejected, robbery of a post office and even more reasons to get abolish the domestic secret service The challenge brought by the Wohlleben defense against all judges for alleged bias was rejected \u2013 as was to be expected since it was simply based on a (likely willful) misunderstanding of the decision on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1135,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions\/1135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAgain he brought documents with him and tried several times to read them before answering. Twice he had to be asked to stop chewing gum during his testimony. He pretended not to have understood even the clearest of questions, pretended not to remember anything, was caught giving untrue statements several times and claimed to have \u201cerred\u201d. And when all this was not enough, he simply refused to answer the questions by claiming that the topics covered were not among those he had been authorized by the secret service to answer.<\/p>\n
\nThe court\u2019s handling of the situation showed once more that it is simply not interested in any more substantial elucidation of the facts. Given the snail\u2019s pace at which the trial is being conducted at the moment, adding G\u00f6rlitz\u2019 files to the case file would not have led to any delays in the trial \u2013 nonetheless the court denied the motion and thus once more prevented information on the role of the secret service and the NSU\u2019s cooperation with other groups and other networks from becoming public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"