Beate Zschäpe, the main defendant in the NSU trial, is taking action before the Federal Constitutional Court. A complaint there was filed on September 20, said her lawyer Mathias Grasel. The aim of the complaint is to reach an oral hearing at the Federal Court of Justice. The lawyer said that the BGH had a new legal opinion when it rejected Zschäpe’s appeal. “We were surprised by the BGH, which left a decade-old case law on complicity.”
Grasel referred to the “interest in the success of the crime”, which the BGH used as a reason for complicity. The defense was unable to comment on this subject in the written procedure. In addition, the defense lawyers of Zschäpe filed a so-called hearing complaint with the BGH. A decision before the Constitutional Court can be expected in two years at the earliest, said Grasel.
The BGH rejected the appeal against Zschäpe in August and declared the judgment to be final. Zschäpe was sentenced to life imprisonment, and the judges determined the severity of the guilt, so that a release after 15 years is impossible.
The right-wing extremist “National Socialist Underground” (NSU) murdered nine men of Turkish and Greek origin and a female police officer between 2000 and 2007. The main perpetrators Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos committed suicide during a police check in 2011. According to the investigation, Zschäpe himself was never at the crime scenes. It was their job to manage the finances of the NSU, to provide alibis and to maintain the bourgeois facade.