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(MUNICH) – A German court on Wednesday declared the main defendant guilty of a series of neo-Nazi murders more than a decade ago – a high-profile trial that raised new questions about the treatment of migrants at home. a time when Germany is grappling with an unprecedented influx of refugees and unfailing support for a far-right party anxious to keep the country white.
The Munich court sentenced Beate Zschaepe, the only known survivor of the National Socialist underground group, to life imprisonment. the murders of 10 people – most of the migrants – who were shot dead between 2000 and 2007. The name of the group, often abbreviated as NSU, alludes to the Nazi party of Adolf Hitler.
Zschaepe was also found guilty of membership in a terrorist organization, bombings that injured dozens and several less serious crimes, including a series of robberies. Four men were also found guilty of supporting the group in various ways and sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
Although the verdict was widely welcomed by the families of the victims as well as the anti-racist activists and the main political parties, The verdict "is a first and very important step," said Gamze Kubasik, the daughter of Mehmet Kubasik , who was shot by the court. The two accomplices of Zschaepe in the city of Dortmund, West, April 4, 2006. "I just hope that all the other supporters of the NSU will be found and convicted."
Uli Grotsch, a deputy of the center-left Social Democratic Party during a parliamentary inquiry into the handling of the case by the authorities, many questions remain unanswered.
"Parents want to know why their father, brother, or son owe it," said Grotsch, adding that Zschaepe and his two dead accomplices – Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt – must have many supporters. to a well organized neo-Nazi network that always operates in secrecy and we can not rule out that a series of murders like that of the NSU can happen at any time. "
Zschaepe was arrested in 2011, shortly after setting fire to the apartment she, Mundlos and Boehnhardt shared in the town of Zwickau.A few hours earlier Mundlos had killed Boehnhardt and then himself in what the investigators believed to be an attempt at escape.
The trio had been hiding in 1998, resolving to kill people "for anti-Semitic or racist motives" in order to intimidate.According to the presiding judge of the court from Munich, Manfred Goetzl [19659009] No evidence was found proving that Zschaepe had been physically present during the robberies and attacks, Goetzl declared his contribution to the crimes of the trio during his He notably cited the role of Zschaepe in the dissemination of 39, a macabre video in which the National Socialist Underground claimed responsibility for the murders after the death of his accomplices. With a cartoon character "Pink Panther", the video contained images that men had taken as their dead or dying dead.
Eight of those killed were ethnic Turks, shaking the Turkish community of three million people in Germany and provoking an angry condemnation Mehmet Daimaguler, a lawyer for relatives of the victims, said that "for my clients, it was important to understand why the state did not protect them. "
For years, the country's security agencies did not consider a possible far-right motive behind the murders and attacks on the country. bomb, focusing instead on whether victims had ties to organized crime – a line of inquiry for which there has never been any evidence
says Daimaguler.
The myriad of errors committed by the German authorities, as well as their use of far right paid informants and the shredding of documents related to the case after the neo-Nazi nexus came anti-migrant sentiment that underpinned the ideology of the group was particularly strong in East Germany in the early 1990s, when Mundlos, Boehnhardt and Zschaepe in the late teens and early the 1920s. The period saw a series of attacks against migrants and the rise of far right parties.
Anti-racist activists drew parallels between this era and the violence directed against asylum seekers in Germany in recent years. Emergence of the far right Alternative for Germany. The party came in third place last year after campaigning against immigration with posters of a pregnant white woman and the slogan: "New Germans – we will do them ourselves."
The head of the Central Council of German Jews, Josef Schuster, warned on Wednesday that the party's success in the elections has given extremist right-wing extremists a parliamentary platform and therefore new opportunities to undermine our democracy. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said after the verdict that the crimes of the National Socialist Underground "should be a lesson and a task for us to fight extreme right-wing extremism in Germany. by all necessary means. "
Judge Goetzl read the verdicts, a group of far-right activists applauded when one of the convicts, Andre Eminger, was sentenced to a lesser punishment than expected
Eminger, who provided the National Socialist Underground with many identity documents and rented mobile homes that they used to travel the country and commit their crimes, smiled to his supporters.
A few hours later, the court ordered Eminger, who was described by his lawyers as a committed national socialist, released while possible appeals are pending.
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