The first half of the trial day was full of interruptions based on attempts by the Zsch\u00e4pe defense to keep expert witness psychiatrist Prof. Sass from fully observing their client. The result is that Sa\u00df now sits about two feet further away from Zsch\u00e4pe. Incidentally, these proceedings showed that the defense has so far paid very little attention to the everyday needs of their client: when they remarked that, Zsch\u00e4pe was not allowed, during interruptions, to use her laptop with the case file in the court\u2019s holding cell, the presiding judge simply replied that she was of course allowed to do so, if this had been denied in the past that was the result of a misunderstanding. Apparently, for more than 200 trial days, the defense had simply never complained about this actual constraint on their client.<\/p>\n
After lunch the court could finally question the first witness, a police officer from the Bernese Oberland. He had been summoned, based on a motion by the Wohlleben defense, to testify on an investigation against the proprietors of a gun shop which had sold the murder weapon Ceska. According to the indictment, the first buyer had given the Ceska to Swiss Hans-Ulrich M\u00fcller, M\u00fcller had brought it Thuringia and after several further holders, it had ended up with accused Wohlleben and Schultze. The chain of custody has been proven by several items of evidence, the court has recently held when reviewing the provisional detention of Wohlleben that there was still a \u201cstrong suspicion\u201d against Wohlleben, a decision that was upheld by the Federal Court of Justice.<\/p>\n
The motion for summons of today\u2019s witness is a Hail Mary attempt by the Wohlleben defense to call into question this evidence. However, the witness did not even confirm what the defense wanted to hear from him, namely that the gun shop\u2019s records were unreliable. Quite to the contrary, he stated that he had looked at the records several times over a period of more than a decade and had always found everything in order. He did not have any knowledge of \u201cshady\u201d deals which the defense had found in other files.<\/p>\n
The next witness was \u2013 once more \u2013 Bernd T\u00f6dter, transported to Munich from the Kassel jail where he is once more detained on suspicion of violent crimes (on his earlier testimony, see the reports of 11 February 2015<\/a> and 23 April 2015<\/a>). T\u00f6dter clearly announced his line at the beginning of his testimony: everything he had told the police back then was a lie, he had never seen any of the accused or B\u00f6hnhardt and Mundlos, he had simply parroted information found online in order to obtain lenient treatment in criminal proceedings against himself: \u201cI thought I\u2019d climb on the bandwagon and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n The presiding judge could not quite follow this change of heart, particularly since T\u00f6dter had indeed had opportunities to come into contact with \u201cthe Three\u201d, had several times visited his brother in Zwickau, had lines of connection within the Nazi scene. Victims\u2019 counsel also asked several critical questions \u2013 inter alia, they established that T\u00f6dter had been in detention before his statement to the police and had not had any opportunity to go online to research the NSU as he claimed to have done. T\u00f6dter remained steadfast: everything he had said had been information found online or simply invented by him, or the police had put words in his mouth and he had simply confirmed what they wanted to hear.<\/p>\n Which of T\u00f6dter\u2019s contradictory statements is true is hard to say. One thing is clear, however: it is inconceivable that the NSU was able to commit murders all over Germany without any local support. This is true above all for the 2006 murders in Kassel and Dortmund. Victims\u2019 counsel have moved for summonses to additional witnesses regarding these issues; it is to be hoped that these witnesses will make clearer statements than T\u00f6dter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the chain of custody of the murder weapon, on a \u201econfessed\u201d liar and on \u201cmisunderstandings\u201d of the Zsch\u00e4pe defense. The first half of the trial day was full of interruptions based on attempts by the Zsch\u00e4pe defense to keep expert witness psychiatrist Prof. Sass from fully observing their client. The result is that Sa\u00df […]<\/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-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","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=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":932,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}