Neo-Nazi murder trial to hear last arguments in Germany

By Ayhan Simsek

BERLIN (AA) - Closing arguments in a high-profile neo-Nazi murder trial in Germany will begin on Wednesday, the court announced on Tuesday.

Members of the far-right terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) are accused of killing at least eight Turkish immigrants, a Greek citizen and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007.

Presiding Judge Manfred Goetzl said at the end of Tuesday’s hearing, which was the 373rd one since the trial began in 2013, that they have completed hearing all testimonies and evidence, and will begin tomorrow listening the final arguments of the prosecutors.

The prosecutors were scheduled to present their closing arguments in the next hearings scheduled until Aug. 1.

The shadowy neo-Nazi group was only revealed in 2011, when two members died after an unsuccessful bank robbery and police found guns and propaganda in their apartment.

Beate Zschaepe, who was arrested in 2011, is believed to be the only surviving member of the group, but she denied any role in the killings and tried to lay the blame on her two colleagues in the far-right terror cell. Four other suspects are accused of providing support to the far-right group.

A verdict is not expected before the end of this year; lawyers of the accused will also give their closing arguments in September.

The NSU terrorist cell is believed to have been founded by three right-wing extremists, Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Bohnhardt and Beate Zschaepe, who lived underground from 1998 with fake identities.

Since the late 1990s, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, or BfV, recruited various informants from the right-wing scene who were believed to have had contacts with the trio.

But the agency failed to prevent the murders or arrest the suspects.

Until 2011, German police and intelligence services dismissed any racial motive for the murders and instead treated immigrant families as suspects with alleged connections to mafia groups and drug traffickers.