According to her lawyer, the convicted right-wing terrorist Beate Zschäpe has admitted to the Bavarian NSU investigative committee more clearly than ever before that she was partly to blame for the series of murders committed by the “National Socialist underground”. “She admitted her complicity in the murders much more intensely today than in the trial,” said Mathias Grasel after Zschäpe’s hour-long interrogation in Chemnitz prison.
“It remains the same: there was no active participation, neither in the preparation nor in the implementation,” emphasized Grasel. “But she said very clearly several times today: If I had acted and reacted differently after the first murder, nothing else would have happened.”
The terrorist cell “National Socialist Underground” (NSU) – Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt – had been murdering Germany for years since 2000. Their victims were nine traders of Turkish and Greek origin and a German policewoman. Mundlos and Böhnhardt also carried out two bomb attacks in Cologne, injuring dozens. The two killed each other in 2011 to avoid being arrested – only then was the NSU exposed. Zschäpe, the only survivor of the trio, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018 after more than five years of trial – as an accomplice, even if there is no evidence that she was at a crime scene herself.
Zschäpe was questioned by members of the Bavarian state parliament in a non-public session throughout Monday. It was the first time she had spoken since the end of the trial, and the first time ever that Zschäpe answered questions directly. In the NSU trial, she only made statements in writing and responded in writing to questions and only spoke twice herself – including in her closing words.
Grasel quoted from Zschäpe’s statement to the committee members: “I could have prevented the first murder from becoming a series. I would have had the opportunity and didn’t use it.” According to Grasel, Zschäpe said: “I wrongly put the lives of Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt above the lives of the victims.”
The committee chairman Toni Schuberl (Greens) reported that Zschäpe said that she did not want the deeds – but also that they were only possible because of her. She also said that she could have prevented the crimes if she had turned herself in when she found out about the first murder.