The first two closing statements today were held by Andreas Thiel and G\u00fcl Pinar on behalf of family members of S\u00fcleyman Ta\u015fk\u00f6pr\u00fc, who had been killed by the NSU in Hamburg in 2001.<\/p>\n
Andreas Thiel\u2019s moving statement showed the immeasurable suffering caused to the family by the murder of their brother, son and father \u2013 S\u00fcleyman Ta\u015fk\u00f6pr\u00fc\u2019s daughter was two years old at the time of his death. Thiel quoted Ta\u015fk\u00f6pr\u00fc\u2019s father, who had found his dying son in the shop and blamed himself for having left shortly before to buy some olives: \u201cI put his head on my lap, touched his face. He tried to say something, but he couldn\u2019t. I tried to render first aid, but I couldn\u2019t. [\u2026] If I had known that the murderers were there, I would have gone back, no matter what would have happened to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thiel referred to a photo of the dying man which the murderers Mundlos and B\u00f6hnhardt had taken shortly after the execution and which had been included in the NSU video, which, according to the evidence heard in court, accused Zsch\u00e4pe had helped compile and which she had spread after the death of Mundlos and B\u00f6hnhardt on 4 November 2011.<\/p>\n
In a few moving words, Andreas Thiel painted a picture of S\u00fcleyman Ta\u015fk\u00f6pr\u00fc\u2019s life, including his very close relationship to his daughter, who could be seen together with her father in all family photos. \u201cAnd this is the man whom Uwe B\u00f6hnhardt and Uwe Mundlos killed in a cowardly attack to further their idea of a Germany without foreigners.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andreas Thiel criticized failures in the police investigation, including the fact that witness descriptions of the killers as \u201ctwo German men\u201d had not been followed up on. However, in his view these failings would better have been considered in a parliamentary inquiry commission.<\/p>\n
G\u00fcl Pinar further argued for the necessity of such a commission being set up by the Hamburg state parliament. Inter alia, she explained why she, like [link]Peer Stolle[\/link], was convinced that the terrorist organization NSU had been founded earlier than stated in the indictment, referring to the crimes involving explosives in the mid-1990s, in which Ralf Wohlleben had also been involved.<\/p>\n
Above all, Pinar referred to a number of connections between members of the \u201cThuringia Home Guard\u201d and thus the NSU members on the one hand and high-ranking Nazis from Hamburg on the other \u2013 the latter included the \u201cGerman Law Office\u201d of attorney Gisa Pahl and now-deceased attorney and Nazi multi-functionary J\u00fcrgen Rieger, as well as Christian Worch, one of the leaders of the [link] GdNF [\/link]. These questions, Pinar continued, could not be dealt with in a criminal trial and should be taken up by an inquiry commission. The Left Party in the Hamburg state parliament had called for such a commission before, but such calls had not been heeded by the other parties \u2013 for further details see the [link] report by NSU watch [\/link] (in German).<\/p>\n
G\u00fcl Pinar finished her closing statement by reminding the court of the importance its judgment would have on further debates concerning the NSU as well as on attempts to further clear up the facts. The court should leave room for further developments, which could be done, e.g., by including the words \u201cat least\u201d: if the court found that the NSU was composed \u201cat least of Zsch\u00e4pe, Mundlos and B\u00f6hnhardt\u201d, this would leave open the possibility of further fact-finding and mean a lot to victims.<\/p>\n
These two statements were followed by a confused statement of Ta\u015fk\u00f6pr\u00fc counsel Wierig, who tried to present herself as a thoughtful liberal, but who in fact presented a m\u00e9lange of reactionary thought snippets. We do not want to give her statements too much room, but a few points are in order: Wierig began by presenting Zsch\u00e4pe as the \u201cmastermind\u201d of the NSU, who had given orders to Uwe Mundlos and Uwe B\u00f6hnhardt \u2013 she accordingly presented Mundlos and B\u00f6hnhardt as mentally ill psychopaths whom Zsch\u00e4pe had provided with a political veneer for their actions. Wierig believed Wohlleben\u2019s self-presentation as a national pacifist, claimed that there were severe doubts as to his guilt since Carsten Schultze\u2019s identification of the murder weapon was not to be trusted \u2013 thus pretending not to have noticed that Wohlleben himself had admitted to having personally handled the pistol and the silencer. She claimed that the responsibility for fears of the migrant community lay above all with dedicated victims\u2019 counsel and critical journalists who had drawn attention to the series of NSU murders, to their ideology and to the racist police investigations. After all, she claimed, it was quite understandable why the police had not warned the migrant communities as it was clear what would have followed if they had: \u201cI am certain that parts of Hamburg would have burned, I think it is likely that there would have been riots, street battles and even that people would have died.\u201d That, then, is the world view of \u201cliberal\u201d counsel Wierig: the Nazis are mentally ill and\/or victims of the judiciary and the only truly evil one Beate, the responsibility for the consequences lies with left-wing lawyers and critical journalists, and migrant communities are powder-kegs to be kept under control lest they explode. Unsurprisingly, this reactionary mish-mash led to unbelieving faces not only of the other Ta\u015fk\u00f6pr\u00fc counsel and other victims\u2019 counsel, but also of journalists outside the courtroom.<\/p>\n
After the lunch break, the court could only hear one more short statement as Eminger\u2019s counsel Hedrich was not present and counsel Kaiser was suffering from a severe cold. Tobias Westkamp, who represents one of the Keupstra\u00dfe victims, thus wrapped up the trial day; his client, Sandro D., was also present in the courtroom. Westkamp\u2019s statement was a welcome change from Wierig\u2019s confused statement. He detailed the consequences of the bombing attack on his client, who had been severely injured by the explosion and by several nails which penetrated his body, and who will suffer from the physical and psychological consequences for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n
Westkamp detailed how hard it was for Sandro D. that, when he woke up in the intensive care unit, he was not given any information as to whether his friend Melih K., who had been standing next to him when the bomb went off, was still alive. More generally, he considered how it hard must have been for the victims to be treated as suspects by the police. \u201cIt is hard to imagine what that does to a victim, to be treated not as such, but as responsible for one\u2019s own suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tobias Westkamp concluded his statement by addressing his client with a thought that contains some hope for the future:<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. D, Cologne is your hometown, it is where you were born and where you grew up, you have never left Cologne even after the attack. Therefore, you know that the NSU\u2019s goal \u2013 the destruction of a free and open society \u2013 has totally failed, not only, but also in Cologne, not only, but also in Cologne-M\u00fclheim, not only, but also in the Keupstra\u00dfe. I hope that this failure can provide you with some comfort.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Tomorrow the court will hear further closing statements by victims\u2019 counsel, inter alia on the Keupstra\u00dfe attack (including the second part of Alexander Hoffmann\u2019s statement) and on the murder of Mich\u00e8le Kiesewetter and the attempted murder of her colleague.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Counsel for the Ta\u015fk\u00f6pr\u00fc family: two strong statements and a ludicrous defense pleading The first two closing statements today were held by Andreas Thiel and G\u00fcl Pinar on behalf of family members of S\u00fcleyman Ta\u015fk\u00f6pr\u00fc, who had been killed by the NSU in Hamburg in 2001. Andreas Thiel\u2019s moving statement showed the immeasurable suffering caused […]<\/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-1505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505","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=1505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1506,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions\/1506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}