Beate Zschäpe tells Munich court she was not involved in attacks by the National Socialist Underground but she regretted failing to prevent them
A woman accused of being the only surviving member of a murderous German neo-Nazi cell that remained undetected for over a decade, has broken her silence for the first time telling a court she was not involved in the planning or carrying out of the attacks but that she regretted failing to prevent them.
Beate Zschäpe, who is on trial for 10 murders, two bomb attacks and several robberies, claimed she was unaware of the motive for the killings, which she insisted had been carried out by her two former lovers, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt.
In a statement read out by her lawyer, Zschäpe painted an image of herself as a victim and passive bystander, insisting she only found out about the killings after they had taken place.
She said she had not been able to muster the courage to turn her back on the men or to go to the police, because they had threatened to kill themselves if she did so. She also denied being part of the National Socialist Underground (NSU).
Families of the NSU’s victims – eight Turkish restaurateurs and shop-owners, a Greek man and a German police officer – listened intently as Zschäpe’s lawyer, Mathias Grasel, read out the 53-page statement over a period of 90 minutes.
The 40-year-old defendant looked on passively during the most dramatic day yet of her two-and-a-half-year trial, which is taking place in the same cramped court room – Room 101 of Munich’s central court – where the former Nazi extermination camp guard John Demjanjuk stood trial in 2011 and tennis champion Boris Becker was convicted of tax evasion in 2002.
Lawyers of the victims said ahead of the statement they hoped Zschäpe would throw some light on details as to how the victims were selected and how the NSU was led to their targets.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/09/german-woman-on-trial-for-neo-nazi-murders-breaks-silence-over-attacks
