Two and one half year old NSU trial in Munich is in a muddle

Talk about going nowhere. The so-called National Socialist Underground trial presided over by Judge Manfred Götzl in Munich is ostensibly seeking to prove that three "neo-nazis" conspired together to kill 9 Turkish immigrants and a federal policewoman.  But after 2 1/2 years that it has dragged on, it has only gotten farther away from such a finding. 

Most of the witnesses have been informers and agents on the payroll of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), which is Germany's national agency for domestic security and intelligence gathering.

We can easily say that the NSU trial is simply an exercise in intelligence gathering. If when the Prosecutor's office started it really had any viable evidence for the charges it brought, this process would have been completed long ago. Two and one half years of buffoonery is all they've got to show. Should the German people not see through it? Even their newspapers cannot hide that a fishing expedition is going on in Götzl's courtroom.

In the meantime, Beate Zschape and her co-defendants are held in prison without real charges.

Endless trial proceedings

Another big mistake by Judge Götzl was allowing lawyers for each of the "Turkish victims" to be co-plaintiffs in the case before it was even determined that the trio were responsible for their deaths. All these co-paintiffs have created a great deal of delay and confusion, but the biggest problem is that their views on what the court is there to determine vary greatly in some respects from Götzl ane the other judges. The prosecution has set out to prove the three acted alone, while the victims' lawyers believe in a larger conspiracy which includes even rogue elements of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. They imagine a branched neo-nazi network behind the murders, not just three people: Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe.

As for Zschäpe, she has tried to fire her lawyers without success, but does have another lawyer, 31 year-old Mathias Grasel, who is the only one she is willing to speak with, presently.

Zschäpe and Rolf Wohlleben have been held in pre-trial detention since November 2011 - almost 4 years!. A year ago Wolheben threatened a hunger strike when the weekend visiting hours were reduced to only once a month, allegedly because of lack of staff. His wife and two daughters had been visiting him every two weeks. I believe all this is done simply to deter others from giving any support to right-wing or N-S causes - to scare them off.

Tino Brandt, a former "neo-nazi" leader and "well-paid agent of the Thuringian (state) secret service" has been a leading witness at the NSU process, though he has publicly called it a "show trial," saying he "personally did not believe" that the guilty parties were "the two Uwes."

"Just as I got to know them, I do not believe the story," Brandt is quoted as saying. He was the founder of the Thuringian Homeland Security (THS), said to have come from the same environment as the NSU. The environment that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution purposefully creates among the "right-wing" is like this:

In December 2014, Tino Brandt was convicted of sexual abuse of children and adolescents, found guilty of aid to sexual abuse and promoting prostitution in 66 cases, and received five and a half years in prison.

But from 1994 to 2001, Brandt was the main source of intelligence of the right-wing scene for the spy service. He said he used the money he received from them on his political activities. He even demanded and received a trip to South Africa.

The spy services recruit sexual perverts to infiltrate right-wing gatherings; they pay them as "agents" but don't want who works for them to be known because they are of such a low class, and unreliable persons. Andreas Temme