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After a five-year trial in Germany, a 43-year-old woman, known as the "Nazi bride" as a member of a neo-Nazi gang who worked 11 years in the country, has been convicted of 10 racist murders.
Beate Zschäpe was the main accused on trial for the murder of eight Turks, a Greek citizen and a police officer between 2000 and 2007.
The decision of the Munich State Court is now condemned to the life imprisonment.
The relationship between the murders was discovered by chance in 2011, after a frustrated thief revealed the existence of the neo-Nazi group – and the terrorist cell – called the National Socialist Underground (NSU ).
Zschäpe, 43, was part of the group alongside two men with whom he shared an apartment in Zwickau, in eastern Germany.
Identified as Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, both died in a sort of suicide pact after an attempted bank robbery.
A fire in the apartment they shared – apparently with the aim of destroying evidence – led Zschäpe to surrender.
"Hello, I am Beate Zschäpe, the woman you have been looking for for days," she told a police officer by phone on November 8, 2011. According to the German newspaper "Augsburger Allgemeine" the call said that he knew nothing about the case and ended the call. A few hours later, accompanied by the lawyer, the woman went to a police station in the city of Jena, where she had spent her childhood. [Photo: HO / DPA / Bundeskriminalamt / AFP] Photo published by the police in 2009, dated 2004, showing together Zschäpe and Böhnhardt [Photo: HO / DPA / Bundeskriminalamt / AFP] Photo taken by the police in 2009, dated 2004, showing Zschäpe and Böhnhardt together (photo: HO / DPA / Bundeskriminalamt / AFP ) "src =" data: image / jpeg; base64, / 9j / 4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD / 2wBDAAMCAgMCAgMDAwMEAwMEBQgFBQQEBQoHBwYIDAoMDAsKCwsNDhIQDQ4RDgsLEBYQERMUFRUVDA8XGBYUGBIUFRT / 2wBDAQMEBAUEBQkFBQkUDQsNFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBT / wgARCAAQABkDASIAAhEBAxEB / 8QAFwAAAwEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABQYHCP / EABUBAQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQD / 9oADAMBAAIQAxAAAAEs35IqMk2ZZhykg3 xAAcEAACAgIDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADBAUGABUBExf // / // 2gAIAQEAAQUCt08pZF4tso6SrZ1Y6L9aDipORE3AtbuVyRPZn EABkRAAIDAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAECABIhsf / aAAgBAwEBPwEuhWhipTOz / 8QAGREAAgMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAECEjET / 9oACAECAQE / Aec1KyN0 / 8QAJxAAAgEDAgMJAAAAAAAAAAAAAQIDABESBCIxQVEFFCEyNWGBk9H / 2gAIAQEABj8CgTRajPTxnNuK3boRTSzvJJjcK2W4i9h413jUSu KEhSNxtyr0yX7l + / KHH4NLGO054oSm6B1uMugqaCdZJdTLbBwbLCA b2t7868wr / 8QAHhABAAICAgMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAREhADEQUUFhoYH / 2gAIAQEAAT8hpbC + + iERrf7jWuDalSuBruscHHUkgAXasH3jBDZIbN5injLAFodaxHkIzQIt0 Lrgf // // aAAwDAQACAAMAAAAQFh xAAZEQEBAAMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABEQAxUfD / 2gAIAQMBAT8QAUHu8cJVKzZnrn xAAYEQEBAQEBAAAAAAAAAAAAA AABEQAhMf // / // aAAgBAgEBPxAYajlkYGdnm EABsQAQEBAQEAAwAAAAAAAAAAAAERIQAxEFHx / 9oACAEBAAE / EKVYGLeIpBhcqfQ4R + T0JlKQ1aNvGWWK8lShJV2sr8SAB7WQMfZ73r9MmiEhug9u3sHARQhDvSIyBY6P17 // 2Q == "/>
More than 600 witnesses were heard at the Munich court, making this trial one of the most important in the post-war history in Germany.
Four other defendants were also sentenced to prison for helping the neo-Nazi gang. Ralf Wohlleben was sentenced to ten years for aiding and abetting the murders – he was the one who got the silenced weapon used in the crimes. Carsten Schultze, a teenager of the time, was found guilty of delivering the pistol and the muffler to the band. He was sentenced to three years.
André Eminger was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for helping the terrorist group. Holger Gerlach was sentenced to three years for delivering his birth certificate and another piece of identity to Uwe Mundlos.
Even before the verdict, Zschäpe's defense lawyer has already said that she would appeal any life sentence.
During the trial, the woman denied participating in the killings, claiming that she had only heard of it after being committed by Mundlos and Böhnhardt.
According to an article published in 2013 by Deutsche Welle, Beate Zschäpe's mother did not know that she was pregnant until she was treated in a hospital for what it was. she thought she was a kidney problem.
The two never had a good relationship and Zschäpe was cared for by his grandmother for years.
Also according to the article, she entered a youth gang at the age of 14 and, two years later, met Uwe Mundlos, who became her first boyfriend and partner in the first flight of money and cigarettes.
Mundlos went to military service, and Uwe Böhnhardt, his best friend, had an affair with Zschäpe.
But the story was not a cause of conflict and the three lived together in the apartment in Zwickauer from 2008.
Mundlos was designated as the brain of the group , Böhnhardt as the guardian of weapons and Zschäpe as responsible take care of the apartment.
After the death of the couple, she took a can of gasoline and set fire to the apartment and then escaped. A few days later, he went to the police.
The NSU case includes 10 murders, two bombings in Cologne, which have left more than 20 wounded and 15 bank robberies.
The victims of the murders were mainly Turks, shot with a CZ 83 pistol for seven years.
A Greek named Theodoros Boulgarides was also killed in 2005.
The last victim was Michèle Kiesewetter, a German police officer shot dead while he was sitting in a car, on duty leave. 2007.
The relationship between murders would only be discovered years later.
The police suspected that the killers were ethnic Turks in the victims' communities, which earned them the nickname "Bosphorus assassins", in reference to the famous chain that leads this name in Istanbul, Turkey. A part of the German press has also come to use the derogatory term "Doner Killers" – in reference to Döner Kebab, a typical Turkish dish made from roasted meat.
Investigators examined the hypothesis that some of the victims were killed in criminal proceedings for participating in criminal activities – allegations that have already been withdrawn from the case.
The families of the victims, their lawyers and their activists have long been frustrated by the fragmented police system of Germany with 16 different jurisdictions for the 16 states.
They believe that institutionalized racism has hindered investigation and judgment.
In particular, they point to the intelligence agency of BfV, accused by them of having destroyed and edited files related to the terrorist cell after its discovery in 2011, in addition to protecting the informants paid in the neo-Nazi world.
Abdulkerim Simsek was 13 years old when his father, florist and first victim of the NSU, was killed in 2000.
He told the German media that his father's body was "the worst day of his life".
He and other relatives of other victims believe that there are more people involved in the crimes still at large and that they should be tried. "There was someone with local knowledge watching all the victims," Simseks told the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
"This spy and other NSU supporters are still free here, and it bothers me a lot."
Unanswered Questions
Jenny Hill, BBC News correspondent in Berlin, notes that Zschäpe was smiling and relaxed in the minutes leading up to the announcement of his life sentence. The woman spoke only twice during the five-year trial.
"But if the families of the victims are likely to accept convictions, neither these procedures nor a series of official inquiries have answered fundamental questions," says Hill.
"How and why did murderers choose their victims?", She continues: "Why did the German authorities – who relied on paid informants in the neo-Nazi community and accused of institutionalized racism – apparently so little to protect them? "
In 2011, an unusual DVD was received by some German news agencies containing some sort of group confession for the crimes he had committed.
The camera showed manipulated images next to the famous cartoon character Pink Panther, in which the group displayed messages touting the murders, as well as images of the attacks.
On November 4 of the same year, Mundlos and Böhnhardt steal a bank in a German city as part of a series of similar assaults they carried out. This time, however, the police were able to follow them in a van in which they had been hiding.
Although armed, the duo did not resist – and was found dead inside the vehicle. Investigators believe that Mundlos shot Böhnhardt before committing suicide.
Zschäpe, then the only survivor of the NSU trio, allegedly set fire to the apartment where the three lived in Zwickau. She went a few days later.
However, the damage caused by the fire on the property did not destroy everything – and the researchers found a copy of the Pink Panther DVD linking the trio on behalf of the NSU and the murders.
The weapon that would have been used in the murders was also found in the rubble.
The public would then know that a neo-Nazi cell had been operating with impunity for 11 years, killing 10 people – and that she had remained unknown to the police for all that time.
A great public outrage ensued, as well as several parliamentary inquiries that called for greater vigilance of neo-Nazi activities.
In July 2015, the German Parliament approved a set of reforms giving more power to the BfV to prevent the flaws in the investigation of this case from being repeated.
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