Germany: NSU murder verdict facing challenges from all sides
Almost two years ago now, Beate Zschäpe was convicted of deliberately and knowingly playing her part in 10 murders. The court also found that the neo-Nazi plots had been driven by “base motives,” which is important in German law to secure the possibility of a genuine life sentence without the likelihood of early release.
The full written reasoning behind the verdict was recently published. Weighing in at 3,025 pages, it’s hardly short. Nevertheless, it appears to have satisfied nobody.
Zschäpe’s lawyers are seeking revisions, which can’t really come as a shock: she received the toughest sentence available despite not having been physically present at or directly implicated in any of the 10 murders.
It was the two men in her life, Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, who killed nine people with migrant backgrounds and one female police officer. The verdict described the killings as “collective and premeditated acts,” and says that Zschäpe played a key role in identifying both the targets and the locations for the killings. The 45-year-old claimed in court that she did not know about the murders until they had taken place. The court disagreed: its verdict pointed to her absence from the crime scenes being entirely intentional — she was to provide her friends a false alibi and ensure they had a safe bolt hole after the crimes.
Three others, convicted of supporting a terrorist group and helping to facilitate murder, also intend to challenge, as does the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. The full written verdict and reasoning might have been 19 months in the making, but challenges for revision must be submitted within one month — that deadline is now looming.
Read more: The German authorities’ many failures in dealing with the NSU
A small, isolated cell is convenient for the authorities
Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe formed a sort of far-right love triangle operating under the radar for around 13 years, mainly living out of small flats and mobile homes and committing the occasional robbery to raise funds. They called themselves the NSU, the National Socialist Underground.
When one of these robberies went wrong in 2011, leading police back to their hideout, officers would find the charred bodies of Mundlos and Böhnhardt in a mobile home plus the service weapon of a murdered policewoman. Only then did it begin to emerge that the trio had committed a series of far-right murders between 2000 and 2007, which had been largely dismissed at the time by police as probable turf wars between organized crime groups with migrant backgrounds. As the trio’s connections to independent police informants and the mass-shredding of files pertaining to their case came to light, Germany’s security services began to face a far larger scandal than simply having misdiagnosed a series of murders.
After Mundlos and Böhnhardt were cornered then committed suicide in a mobile home, Zschäpe torched the flat they had been hiding out in
For a group of 19 lawyers representing the victims, this aspect is what’s lacking in the reasoning behind Zschäpe’s conviction. They have written an open letter describing the lengthy tome as a “monument to the failure of the legal system,” saying that much of the relevant evidence has been “shortened to the point that it’s unrecognizable, or simply not mentioned.”
Victims’ lawyers aghast at what is missing
Lawyer Sebastian Scharmer represents joint plaintiff Gamze Kubasik, whose father Mehmet was murdered in Dortmund in 2006. In his view, the main aim of the trial, besides convicting the sole surviving core member of the National Socialist Underground, was “to shed light on the crimes of the NSU more generally.” In particular, he says that should have included identifying the group’s accomplices and support network, and investigating the failings of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (the Verfassungsschutz). Scharmer tells DW that there was plenty of evidence suggesting that court testimony from these informants was not entirely true. “And yet everything that happened is no longer present in this written verdict.”
For him, the verdict largely overlooks or at least underplays what should be a core set of questions in any such case: “How large, and just how dangerous were these underlying structures? Who else really helped co-found the group? How many others were involved?”
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
10 victims, 10 tragedies
Nine of the 10 victims were of foreign heritage, but they had all made Germany their home when they were killed. The 10th victim was a German police officer. Every one of them was shot in cold blood.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Enver Simsek
On September 9, 2000, the florist Enver Simsek, pictured with his wife, was shot eight times. The 38-year-old father of two sold flowers near a small parking lot in the southern city of Nuremberg. Simsek, who migrated from Turkey to Germany in 1986, is believed to be the first murder victim in the NSU series of racially motivated killings.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Abdurrahim Ozudogru
Also in Nuremberg, Turkish-born tailor Abdurrahim Ozudogru was shot on June 13, 2001 in his alteration shop. He was 49 years old with a daughter who was 19 at the time of his murder.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Suleyman Taskopru
Later that month, on June 27, 2001 Suleyman Taskopru was shot dead in his father’s fruit and vegetable shop in Hamburg. He was 31 years old and had a three-year-old daughter.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Habil Kilic
On August 29 of the same year, 38-year-old Habil Kilic, who was also a fruit and vegetable grocer, was killed in his shop in Munich. Like Taskopru, he was shot in the head. His wife and his 12-year-old daughter later left Germany.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Mehmet Turgut
Mehmet Turgut lived in Hamburg, but was visiting a friend in the eastern German city of Rostock and helping out at a Doner kebab fast food restaurant when he was shot on February 25, 2004. He was killed by three bullets to the head.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Ismail Yasar
Ismail Yasar was shot five times in his doner kebab restaurant in Nuremberg on June 9, 2005. A customer found him behind the counter. The 50-year-old had three children.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Theodoros Boulgarides
Just a few days later, on June 15, 2005, Theodoros Boulgarides was shot dead in Munich in his lock and key service shop. He was the only victim with Greek heritage. The 41-year-old father of two was the NSU’s seventh murder victim.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Mehmet Kubasik
On a busy street at noon on April 4, 2006 in the western city of Dortmund, Turkish-born Mehmet Kubasik was killed by several shots to the head in his small convenience store. The 39-year-old left behind a wife and three children.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Halit Yozgat
In Kassel on April 6, 2006, Halit Yozgat was also shot in the head. He was killed in the internet cafe he ran with his father. Twenty-one years old, Turkish-born but with a German passport, Yozgat was taking night school classes to graduate from high school.
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The victims of the neo-Nazi NSU murder spree
Michele Kiesewetter
Michele Kiesewetter, a 22-year-old police officer, was shot dead on April 25, 2007 in the southwestern city of Heilbronn. She was the NSU’s 10th and final murder victim.
Back in 2012, when news of shredded files had forced the head of the Verfassungsschutz to quit, Angela Merkel pledged that investigations would yield “complete” clarity on what really happened. For Scharmer, there’s no dispute that the court case did not achieve this, and that it couldn’t do so by itself, but he says Merkel and the state is yet to truly deliver clarity on any stage.
“And this leaves the loved ones of the victims killed or wounded by the NSU alone,” Scharmer says.
Read more: The rise of Neo-Nazi crimes is a legacy of the NSU
A retrial is not impossible
In Scharmer’s view, the Germany security agencies could scarcely have done a better job if they had written the court’s reasoning themselves. If the NSU really was a limited group of three people with just a handful of helpers, then the case is largely closed from a policing point of view. The verdict also points to an isolated and radicalized cell, rather than to structural problems enabling their crimes. But Scharmer warns that if this conclusion is mistaken, “then we will not be able to prevent future [far-right] attacks and murders.” The 2019 killing of local politician Walter Lübcke and attack in Halle, plus this February’s shooting in Hanau, add some weight to his claims.
While the victims’ relatives and their lawyers do not dispute the guilty verdict against Zschäpe, they also lament the “ugly apathy” in the language of the written reasoning.
The open letter laments that almost all victims are described “in almost identical ways.” Instead the verdict could have “given them faces, and described the holes teared open by their murders.” Several of the victims’ relatives testified in the trial, but not one word from any of them pops up on any of the 3,025 pages.
Scharmer says this is why his co-plaintiff and others have expressed “great disappointment and a degree of bitterness.”
This feeling could yet intensify. Should Germany’s Federal Court of Justice identify any lacking evidence or factual errors in the document, the trial might have to be restarted. And in that case, Beate Zschäpe might also hope for a milder sentence.
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Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-nsu-murder-verdict-facing-challenges-from-all-sides/a-53453001?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf