'Hitler child' goes on trial in Germany for 10 racist murders
Christof Stache / AFP - Getty Images
Beate Zschaepe who is charged with complicity in the murders of eight ethnic Turks, a Greek immigrant and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, enters a courtroom in Munich, Germany, on Monday.
The chance discovery of the gang, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which had gone undetected for more than a decade, has forced Germany to acknowledge it has a more militant and dangerous neo-Nazi fringe than previously thought.
Beate Zschaepe, 38, is charged with complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, as well as two bombings in immigrant areas of Cologne and 15 bank robberies.
[scroll down to view subhuman Turk act like a monkey in heat outside court buildings!]
AND HERE the NSP News Service states categorically that the German Patriot wrongly being tried here is NOT an example of the notion that "Germany may not have learned her lesson yet" but is, rather, a fine example of left-wing persecution of right-wing sentiments. In other words, Frau Zschaepe is a "political criminal" being tried for having a certain political point of view and acting on it. She is, of course, innocent of any and all charges.
Rather than being put on trial, she should be given an award for her efforts to keep Germany free from foreign, leftist, Zionist elements and influences.
-- Karl Wolff III, Director of Communications, NSP. 1488!
"With its historical, social and political dimensions, the NSU trial is one of the most significant of post-war German history," lawyers for the family of the first victim, flower seller Enver Simsek, said in a statement.
The case has shaken a country that believed it had learned the lessons of the past, and reopened a debate about whether it must do more to tackle the far-right and lingering racism.
Zschaepe, wearing a black jacket and white shirt, chatted with her lawyers before the judges entered, her back turned to the television cameras. One of four other defendants charged with assisting the NSU hid under a dark hood.
Stephan Jansen / EPA
A Turkish woman who tried forcibly to enter the court building where Beate Zschaepe is being tried is arrested by police in Munich, Germany, on Monday.
About 500 police officers provided tight security. Members of the public and media, who lined up before dawn for a chance to attend, even had their hair searched before being allowed in.
The existence of the gang came to light in November 2011 when the two men believed to have founded the NSU with Zschaepe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, committed suicide after a botched bank robbery and set their caravan ablaze.
In the charred vehicle, police found the gun used in all 10 murders and a grotesque DVD claiming responsibility for them, in which the bodies of the victims were pictured with a cartoon Pink Panther totting up the number of dead.
After the suicides, Zschaepe is believed to have set fire to a flat she shared with the men in Zwickau, in east Germany. Four days later, she turned herself in to police in her hometown of Jena, saying: "I'm the one you're looking for."
For the victims' families, the trial will be the first chance to come face-to-face with Zschaepe, whose blank expression and resolute silence since her arrest have left people struggling to make sense of her motives.
"The Banality of Evil" read the front page of the newspaper Die Welt. The mass-circulation Bild wrote that Zschaepe "looks like a woman at the supermarket till" rather than someone "rabidly mad or explosive".
Few expect Zschaepe to explain herself at the trial. The Norwegian anti-immigrant mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, wrote to Zschaepe last year addressing her as "Dear Sister" and urging her to use the trial to spread far-right ideology.
Reuters
Beate Zschaepe, right, is seen with Uwe Boehnhardt of the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Underground in this undated handout picture provided by the German Federal Police.
As teenagers in Jena, the trio were known to authorities to be involved in racist hate crimes and bomb making, but they escaped arrest and assumed new identities.
Prosecutors say they hose shopkeepers and small business owners as easy targets to try to hound immigrants out of Germany. Some of the victims' relatives came under suspicion because police simply did not consider a far-right motive.
"During the investigations they were either treated as suspects, or as relatives of criminals," said lawyer Angelika Lex.
Parliament is conducting an inquiry into how police and intelligence agencies failed to link the murders or share information about the far-right threat.
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