The first witness today was another victim of the nail bomb attack in the Keupstra\u00dfe in Cologne. At the time of the explosion, he was in the travel office of his father in the Keupstra\u00dfe. He was lucky to remain uninjured since a delivery van was parked between him and the bomb \u2013 the van caught several dozen nails. The two expert witnesses, who had already presented clear and convincing reports on the deadly danger emanating from the bomb (see the report of [link] 11 February 2015), confirmed those reports and supplemented them with regard to the witness of today and other Keupstra\u00dfe witnesses who had testified in the last months.<\/p>\n
In the afternoon, the court heard another colleague of secret service officer Temme, a Mr. Hess who in 2006 was the officer responsible for \u201cprotection of official secrets\u201d. He, too, had talked on the phone to Temme several times after the murder of Halit Yozgat in Kassel, at a time when Temme was suspect in the proceedings concerning that murder. These conversations were tapped by the police. In the first conversation, Hess said verbatim: \u201cAnd I tell everybody, um, if you know that something like that happens at some place, please don\u2019t pass by that place.\u201d Today, he claimed that his had not meant that Temme had known of the murder in advance, but his explanations were far from convincing. Accordingly, presiding judge G\u00f6tzl asked several follow up questions, summing up his thoughts as follows: \u201cIf the person in question knows that there will be a murder there, then the advice [not to go to that place] is sound.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rest of his phone calls with Temme also showed that supporting Temme and the secret service was the only thing that was important for him, while the murder investigation \u2013 in which Temme was still a suspect \u2013 was without any importance. Accordingly, he counseled Temme to say \u201cas close to the truth as possible\u201d in talking to the police. Attempts by the criminal police to get the secret service to \u201ccease its clearly visible policy of supporting the suspect\u201d were blocked by Hess, who still today tried to justify the actions of the secret service supporting Temme.
\nAfter questioning by presiding judge G\u00f6tzl, Hess was questioned by victims\u2019 counsel until well after 5 p.m. This questioning showed once more that the \u201cwall of silence\u201d built by the secret service towards the police is being upheld until this day. One clear example is Hess\u2019 explanation of why he had refused to allow the police to question the informers \u201cled\u201d by Temme: \u201cI just felt that they did not have enough facts. The police investigation was stalled, and after all the investigation [against Temme] was later discontinued.\u201d Of course, what\u2019s entirely missing in this statement is any realization that it was precisely the lack of support by the secret service which caused the investigation to stall, that this policy confirmed Temme\u2019s resolution to remain silent.
\nEarlier in the day, parties had made several motions for the taking of evidence. One motion by victims\u2019 counsel aims at showing that the gasoline used by Beate Zsch\u00e4pe to set fire to the NSU flat in the Fr\u00fchlingsstra\u00dfe in Zwickau in 2011 had been bought just one week earlier at a gas station in Zwickau.<\/p>\n
The Wohlleben defense continues to follow its thesis that Wohlleben had not been the \u201ccentral figure\u201d among supporters in Jena and moved that additional Nazi witnesses be heard. Inter alia, an earlier leading cadre of the \u201cThuringia Home Guard\u201d will allegedly state that Wohlleben tried to arrange a live interview with the three who had gone underground at a time when they had already committed the first of their violent crimes and that he had always argued against violence as a political strategy. Also, the defense wants to call a German gun owner who allegedly bought guns illegally from the owner of the gun shop from which the murder weapon Ceska was also bought. The defense is obviously aware that even if the witnesses testify as claimed, this does not change the massive body of evidence concerning the provision of the gun by Wohlleben and Schultze, Wohlleben\u2019s knowledge of the ideology of the trio and their propensity towards violence, as well as his own ideology. The defense is grasping at straws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once more on the Keupstra\u00dfe bombing attack, and more on secret service officer Temme The first witness today was another victim of the nail bomb attack in the Keupstra\u00dfe in Cologne. At the time of the explosion, he was in the travel office of his father in the Keupstra\u00dfe. He was lucky to remain uninjured […]<\/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-950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950","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=950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":952,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions\/952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}