After more than 300 days of trial, the primary living suspect in a murder case that now has stretched out over 16 years spoke publicly for the first time Thursday.
Beate Zschaepe, who is charged as one three core members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU) that murdered nine immigrant shopkeepers and a police officer between 2000 and 2007, arrived in a Munich courtroom to read out a short statement.
The statement stopped short of being an admission of guilt in the murders. It also did not contain the apology she had written in 2015 that one of her attorneys had read aloud for the judges, when she had said she felt “morally guilty for not having been able to prevent 10 murders and two bombing attacks.”
The trial deals with how three neo-Nazis systematically hunted down immigrants, primarily Turks, and killed them.
According to German media reports, this was the statement:
“I condemn my wrongdoing. In my youth I identified with issues like foreign infiltration. Today I judge people not by their origin and political attitudes but by their behavior. I have no more sympathies for Nationalist ideology. I condemn what Uwe Boehnhardt and Uwe Mundlos did to the victims.”
The trial deals with how three neo-Nazis systematically hunted down immigrants, primarily Turks, and killed them. Boehnhardt and Mundlos, the suspects believed to have actually committed the murders, died in an apparent murder-suicide as police were closing in on them in 2011.
Zschaepe is charged as an accessory to murder for acting as their primary support and enabler and producing what amounts to a DVD confession, which is set to a Pink Panther cartoon. She turned herself in shortly after the men’s deaths.
Four other men, known members of German neo-Nazi organizations, are charged as accomplices, for providing money, weapons and helping hide the core members of the NSU.
The controversy surrounding the case comes largely from the fact that German local police dismissed the possibility that the murders had anything to do with neo-Nazis and instead focused on the notion of a “Turkish Mafia.” That strategy, in effect, blamed the victims.
At the same time, German domestic intelligence was actually paying a number of German neo-Nazis as informers, including those thought to be close to this case. This has raised suspicions that the German government knew more about the case than police, yet failed to aid and even impeded the criminal investigation.
The next trial date is set for October, when a psychiatrist will testify about whether Zschaepe can be held responsible for her actions. Her attorneys have claimed she had a weak personality and was emotionally dependent upon Boehnhardt and Mundlos. The prosecution maintains that she was an equal partner in the murderous group.
Matthew Schofield: @mattschodcnews
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