Two family members of Beate Zsch\u00e4pe were called to testify today and to afford the court a glimpse of the personality and development of the main accused. Her mother, however, refused to testify, as is her right as mother of the accused. She only spent three minutes in the courtroom.<\/p>\n
Her cousin, Stefan A., did testify. He describes himself as a fun-oriented member of the skinhead part of the Jena Nazi scene, someone who did not have much to do with politics. \u201cOne gets incited by the music, it describes what many thought back then \u2013 against the state, against foreigners, against leftists, against communism\u201d, he describes the atmosphere in Jena in the 1990s. Beate Zsch\u00e4pe was part of that scene. The witness describes her as confident. Her first serious boyfriend had tried to dress the part, but had not been accepted by the scene. Zsch\u00e4pe later hung out with Uwe Mundlos and Uwe B\u00f6hnhardt, who were very interested in Nazi music and politics.<\/p>\n
When it comes to his own role, however, he denies having had a relevant position in the Nazi scene of Jena. Asked about police dossiers and other documents describing him as one of eight members of the \u201cKameradschaft Jena\u201d, he tries to downplay his role. From this point on, he answers nearly every question by claiming memory gaps \u2013 hardly any memories of concerts attended, of trips to Nuremberg, of conversations. He does at least relate that Uwe Mundlos was in charge of upholding the contact to Thomas Starke, imprisoned Nazi and later informer for the domestic secret service \u2013 Mundlos also delivered greetings from the witness to Starke. However, A. claimed not to remember that Starke, as well as another acquaintance, were likely leading members of \u201cBlood and Honour\u201d Chemnitz. A. obviously follows the parole passed out to witness from the Nazi scene \u2013 \u201cforget everything\u201d. He only admits having taken part in a KKK-style cross burning and having shown the \u201cK\u00fchnen salute\u201d, a variant of the Nazi salute, after pictures of these events have been shown in court and there is no use denying. Again, he claims not to have known what that signal meant.<\/p>\n
The court does not pressure him \u2013 after all he has already said what was needed to confirm the indictment: Beate Zsch\u00e4pe was self-confident, had her men under control, was a member of equal standing of the Nazi scene surrounding her, Mundlos, B\u00f6hnhardt, Kapke, Gerlach and Wohlleben.<\/p>\n
A.\u2019s testimony will continue tomorrow. Other witnesses originally called for tomorrow have been postponed, with the exception of a former girlfriend of accused Andr\u00e9 Eminger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zsch\u00e4pe\u2019s family: her mother does not testify, her cousin \u201edoes not remember\u201c Two family members of Beate Zsch\u00e4pe were called to testify today and to afford the court a glimpse of the personality and development of the main accused. Her mother, however, refused to testify, as is her right as mother of the accused. She […]<\/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-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","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=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}