The Federal Court of Justice has confirmed the judgment against André Eminger. The Munich Higher Regional Court had sentenced the helper of the NSU trio around Beate Zschäpe to two and a half years in prison for supporting a terrorist organization. This completes the legal processing of the NSU complex.
The Federal Court of Justice had to negotiate the judgment against Eminger because the Federal Prosecutor’s Office had appealed. The sentence was far too low for her. She considers the arguments of the Higher Regional Court, according to which Eminger only found out late about the murder and attack plans, especially against people with foreign roots, to be implausible – but instead considered them to be contradictory and legally flawed.
The Munich Higher Regional Court (OLG) originally sentenced the avowed right-wing extremist Eminger to only two and a half years in prison for supporting a terrorist organization. The prosecution called for Eminger to be imprisoned for twelve years for aiding and abetting murder and robbery.
One of the central points on which the Federal Court of Justice now had to decide was the question of whether and from when Eminger knew about the machinations of the NSU. If the BGH had seen problems with the arguments of the Higher Regional Court, it could have overturned the judgment and referred these parts of the proceedings back to Munich for the new hearing.
The decisive factor for the OLG’s original ruling was the question of whether Eminger had known about the crimes of the NSU trio or merely helped them go into hiding. The 42-year-old supported the terrorists Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe for years while they were active at the NSU. He rented an apartment for her under his name, as well as a mobile home several times. The trio used the vehicle for robberies and a bomb attack in Cologne.
The central subject of the negotiation was an incident from 2007. After water damage in the NSU’s shelter, Zschäpe was summoned to a police station where she would have had to identify herself. To cover her, Eminger gave her his wife Susann’s ID and passed it on to the police as this. This allowed the NSU to remain underground for another three years.
Zschäpe stated that Eminger was only then informed about the robberies that she and her accomplices committed. The federal prosecutor assumes, however, that he already knew about the robberies and murders. Given the lack of clear evidence, the OLG ruled that Eminger was ignorant. Both the federal prosecutor’s office and the convicted person refused to accept the verdict. Eminger demanded his acquittal.
The right-wing extremist terrorist cell NSU was active between 1999 and 2011. She murdered nine people between 2000 and 2007 and also carried out other attacks that injured numerous people. The main target of the violence was migrant people, and one of the murder victims was a policewoman.
The group was exposed when the members Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt were caught by the police after a robbery and committed suicide. Beate Zschäpe turned herself in to the police a few days later. In 2018 she was sentenced to life imprisonment as an accomplice.
The Federal Court of Justice had rejected Zschäpe’s appeal in August without prior hearing. She is legally sentenced to life imprisonment as an accomplice in the racially motivated series of murders. In 2018, the Higher Regional Court also determined the particular gravity of the guilt in her case. The judgments against three other NSU helpers are also final.