Trial of 'Nazi bride' Beate Zschape sets Germany on edge
- The Times
- May 04, 2013
Beate Zschape, 38, has said nothing to investigators about her alleged role in 10 murders by the self-styled National Socialist Underground since she surrendered to police in November 2011 with the words: "I'm the one you are looking for."
That was four days after the bodies of Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Bohnhardt were found in a caravan in an apparent suicide pact after a bungled bank robbery. The apartment they shared with Ms Zschape in Saxony was blown up, allegedly by her.
Police found a handgun in the rubble that was used in the so-called kebab killings of eight Turks and one Greek immigrant between 2000 and 2006, as well as a policewoman in 2007.
For years the deaths were investigated by police as score-settling within the Turkish community, but a video claiming neo-Nazi responsibility was allegedly posted by Ms Zschape before she surrendered.
It told a very different story - one which caused a national outcry at the way in which police completely overlooked the neo-Nazi threat - leading to diplomatic protests from Turkey and a public apology from Angela Merkel, the Chancellor. A parliamentary inquiry is studying whether there was an institutional reluctance to investigate the far-Right.
"There have been only a handful of trials in recent German history that have had a similar importance," said Gurcan Daimaguler, a Berlin lawyer of Turkish origin who represents some of the victims' families. Since the Nuremberg trials of senior Nazis, only the far-Left Red Army Faction terror group in the 1970s and the trials of East German border guards and officials who ordered the shooting of people trying to flee to West Germany have caused so much national soul-searching.
Ms Zschape was branded the "Nazi bride" by German tabloids because she first went out with Mundlos and later with Bohnhardt. Her defence team will paint her as a besotted fellow traveller of the far-Right.
She faces charges of founding a terrorist organisation and acting as an accomplice in nine murders and one murderous attack on police, as well as attempted murder through two bombings, 15 robberies and arson.
Four men will sit beside her in the dock on Monday in the Munich courtroom charged with helping and arming the group. The prosecution aims to portray Ms Zschape as a core member of the cell without whom the killers could not have stayed below the radar from the first murder, in September 2000.
"Beate was actually a sweet, nice girl," her mother Jane told investigators. Bohnhardt's mother also thought her pleasant. "She was a normal girl - nice and polite," Brigitte Bohnhardt said in a television interview.
Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-Right loner who killed 77 people in Norway in July 2011, has sent Ms Zschape a letter calling her "a courageous heroine of national resistance".
One of those planning to watch in court is Semiya Simsek, whose father, Enver, 38, a flower seller, was the NSU's first victim. "I want to see justice served," she said. "I want to know whether the authorities covered anything up. I want to have closure.
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