Today the Gerlach defense held its closing statement. And while this statement, too, remained unconvincing in the end and will not save Gerlach from his well-earned conviction, one can at least state, at least with regard to the statement by counsel Hachmeister, that this, finally, was an actual closing statement. Yes, Gerlach\u2019s counsel attacked \u201cpolitical circles\u201d using the trial for political issues, and yes, they brought ludicrous claims, e.g. that nobody had had to deal with right-wing terror prior to the 2000s. But they at least made an actual effort to convince the court and dealt in some detail with the evidence presented and considered by the prosecution.<\/p>\n
Hachmeister began by lamenting the \u201cpressure to penalize\u201d bearing on the trial and referred to his client\u2019s fear of being used as a \u201cscapegoat\u201d for the crimes of B\u00f6hnhardt and Mundlos given that these two could not be punished anymore. Now, one can easily call into question whether there was such pressure to a significant level with respect to Gerlach \u2013 the sentenced of five years proposed by the prosecution is hardly testament to an overly punitive approach.\u00a0 Quite to the contrary, one may well say that Gerlach profited quite extensively from the less than eager investigations into persons surrounding the NSU\u2019s core trio given that he, as an old friend and faithful comrade of the three persons, who moreover subjected himself to regular \u201csystem checks\u201d until the year 2011, could well be suspected of having been a member, rather than just a supporter, of the NSU.<\/p>\n
However, given the lack of objective elements of proofs concerning Gerlach\u2019s relationship to Zsch\u00e4pe, B\u00f6hnhardt and Mundlos, the defense could quite easily present him as someone who, based on a long friendship with there three, wished to support them in living \u201cunderground\u201d, who also accepted that they might commit crimes to finance their livelihoods, but who never considered that they might commit murders and bombing attacks. Accordingly, he was to be convicted of only one count of supporting a criminal, rather than a terrorist organization (the criminal nature being due to the robberies in fact committed). According to counsel Rokni-Yazdi, this called for a sentence of two years or less. He added that Gerlach had asked them not to argue for a concrete sentence as he was ready to accept any sentence handed down by the court. Rokni-Yazdi continued that is was possible that the court, if it handed down a sentence of two years or less, would opt not to hand down a suspended sentence, despite Gerlach\u2019s fulfilling all the usual criteria for such suspension, based on topos of \u201cdefending the legal order\u201d given the importance of the NSU complex as a whole. This was a clear invitation to the court to hand down a short sentence of twelve or eighteen months and \u201cbalance\u201d this by opting for a custodial, rather than a suspended, sentence.<\/p>\n
Now, the arguments brought above all by counsel Hachmeister as to why Gerlach had no inkling of the danger of murders and bombing attacks could have been quite convincing when considered in the abstract \u2013 Hachmeister proved quite able to capitalize on the failures and lacunae of the investigation. However, his client himself had already thrown a monkey wrench in his plans: in his statement to the police and in court, Gerlach had admitted that in 2001 or 2002, he had provided the NSU core trio with a pistol and had told them that they should not try to \u201csave the world with five people\u201d. Carsten Schultze\u2019s defense counsel have correctly explained last week how this sentence, especially the number five, is to be understood \u2013 it describes the NSU as a logical extension of the \u201cComradeship Jena\u201d and its discussions on the use of armed violence in furtherance of its political goals, with the three who had \u201cgone underground\u201d prepared to commit violent crimes while the two remaining \u201caboveground\u201d supported them and functioned as their \u201clegal arm\u201d \u2013 these latter two being Gerlach and Wohlleben, Andr\u00e9 Kapke, the final core member of the \u201cComradeship\u201d, having been out of the picture since he had been accused of having embezzled money meant to support the three. In other words, then, Gerlach himself has admitted that he had indeed foreseen the danger of violent crimes, but has claimed to have tried to get \u201cthem\u201d to refrain from such crimes. He has never reported that his efforts of persuasion had been successful, but nonetheless, he provided the NSU core trio not only with the pistol, but also with several identity papers, relying on alleged promises that \u201cno stupid shit\u201d would happen with them. Accordingly, Gerlach himself has done all that needs to be done to prove that he acted with the requisite mens rea of supporting a terrorist organization, a fact which no closing statement in the world could have changed.<\/p>\n
In passing, it should be noted that his defense attorneys, too, presented some arguments which were, to say the least, less than convincing. We would like to mention only one: both Hachmeister and Rokni-Yazdi referred to the ease with which Zsch\u00e4pe, Mundlos and B\u00f6hnhardt had allegedly accepted Gerlach\u2019s \u201cexiting\u201d the Nazi scene. This may well have been due to the fact that this \u201cexit\u201d was not all it was made out to be: when the police searched Gerlach\u2019s computer and telephone in 2011, they found a large number of Nazi songs and pictures, an invitation to a \u201cHammerskin\u201d music festival etc. As to pictures showing Gerlach participating at a minimum of three Nazi demos after his alleged \u201cexit\u201d, the court had not deemed it necessary to show these in court.<\/p>\n
In summary, while parts of today\u2019s closing statement were quite well-presented, none of it will be of much help to Gerlach.<\/p>\n
The trial will continue on Tuesday, 15 May with the closing statement of the Wohlleben defense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Closing statement of the Gerlach defense: quite well done but disproved by their own client. Today the Gerlach defense held its closing statement. And while this statement, too, remained unconvincing in the end and will not save Gerlach from his well-earned conviction, one can at least state, at least with regard to the statement by […]<\/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-1598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598","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=1598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1599,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598\/revisions\/1599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}