Today\u2019s first witness was one of the agents of the domestic secret service who had been responsible for informer Tino Brandt. He stated that he had thought at first that Brandt was trying to dupe them, but that a good routine of day-to-day cooperation had later developed. He had had to \u201cswitch off\u201d Brandt because the head of the office, Roewer, had felt that Brandt\u2019s contact agent, Wiessner, was trying to go behind his back. Like last week\u2019s secret service witnesses, today\u2019s witness will have to return to Munich to testify again after Brandt has testified.<\/p>\n
The court then questioned Thomas Rothe, who provided the first flat to \u201cthe Three\u201d after they had gone underground. He first tried to stonewall with statements like \u201cThey appeared at my door, later they spent the night.\u201d Patient questioning revealed that Rothe was a member of the Nazi music scene in Chemnitz and often had members of international Nazi bands as houseguests. He stated that Mundlos, B\u00f6hnhardt and Zsch\u00e4pe not only lived with him for a while, but that he also continued to meet them, both in Chemnitz and in Zwickau, after they had moved out and until 2001.<\/p>\n
He had been brought into contact with \u201cthe Three\u201d by Thomas Starke, who had appeared at his door with them and asked him to allow them to move in for a while. Starke had also called him and talked about a TV report concerning the manhunt, stating that \u201cyou know who you have there.\u201d Rothe admitted having been a member of \u201cBlood and Honour\u201d, the Nazi organization of which Starke was also a member and from whose ranks came many of the NSU supporters in Saxony. Thomas Starke will testify on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the presiding judge asked a number of questions regarding \u201cBlood and Honour\u201d even though the indictment only mentions that organization in passing. However, the witness refused to answer questions concerning other \u201cB&H\u201d members: After the presiding judge had threatened him with an administrative fine and coercive detention for refusing to answer, he referred to a criminal investigation against him regarding his \u201cB&H\u201d activities, which had only been discontinued in 2010 on the grounds of \u201cminor guilt.\u201d Rothe claimed a privilege against self-incrimination in connection with that investigation. The presiding judge interrupted his testimony in order to find out whether that privilege applies, which will require taking a look at the case file of that investigation. The witness will likely face considerable pressure from the court when he continues his testimony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The network in Chemnitz Today\u2019s first witness was one of the agents of the domestic secret service who had been responsible for informer Tino Brandt. He stated that he had thought at first that Brandt was trying to dupe them, but that a good routine of day-to-day cooperation had later developed. He had had to […]<\/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-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","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=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}