Beate Zschäpe turned herself in to Police on Nov. 8 after being named the 3rd member of an alleged neo-nazi terror cell in Zwickau, Germany.
Her lawyer, Public Defender Wolfgang Heer, filed a complaint against her detention with Germany's Federal Court of Justice on Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2011. In it, he said there were insufficient grounds for suspecting his client of having founded a terrorist organization or being a member of such an organization.
He stated there was no evidence of a firm organizational structure among Uwe Böhnhardt, Uwe Mundlos and Zschäpe and currently no proof of a common will to organize, which is also a legal criterion for a terrorist organization. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Zschäpe was involved in creating the videos that were found on the scene of the burned house where the two men had lived.
In an interview with Der Spiegel on 12/27, Heer said, "Currently we have only seen about 500 pages (of case files), of which most are not significant in relation to the accusation of forming a terrorist organization. We have not even seen any of the files from the murder investigations." He said it was impossible to guarantee a fair trial under such conditions, and that Zschäpe's ability to defend herself was severely curtailed as a result.
On Nov. 12 I sub-hosted William Finck's
