Courts finds suspect in neo-Nazi trial guilty of 10 killings

U.S. Court Watch

A German court on Wednesday found the main defendant in a high-profile neo-Nazi trial guilty over the killing of 10 people - most of them migrants - who were gunned down between 2000 and 2007 in a case that shocked Germany and prompted accusations of institutional racism in the country's security agencies.

Judges sentenced Beate Zschaepe to life in prison for murder, membership of a terrorist organization, bomb attacks that injured dozens and several lesser crimes including a string of robberies. Four men were found guilty of supporting the group in various ways and sentenced to prison terms of between 2½ and 10 years.

Presiding judge Manfred Goetzl told a packed Munich courtroom that Zschaepe's guilt weighed particularly heavily, meaning she is likely to serve at least a 15-year sentence. Her lawyers plan to appeal the verdict.

The 43-year-old showed no emotion as Goetzl read out her sentence. A number of far-right activists attending the trial clapped when one the co-accused, Andre Eminger, received a lower sentence than expected.

Zschaepe was arrested in 2011, shortly after her two accomplices were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide. Together with the men, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, she had formed the National Socialist Underground, a group that pursued an ideology of white racial supremacy by targeting migrants, mostly of Turkish origin.

Goetzl said the trio agreed in late 1998 to kill people "for anti-Semitic or other racist motivations" in order to intimidate ethnic minorities and portray the state as impotent.

They planned to wait until they had committed a series of killings before revealing their responsibility, in order to increase the public impact of their crimes.

Related listings

  • Police shooting of boy spurs more protests, appeals

    Police shooting of boy spurs more protests, appeals

    U.S. Court Watch 06/23/2018

    Protesters demonstrated Friday for a third day over the fatal police shooting in Pennsylvania of an unarmed black teen fleeing a traffic stop as they sought to get the attention of a nation engrossed by the immigration debate, and to pressure officia...

  • Palin's son moves to court program after assaulting father

    Palin's son moves to court program after assaulting father

    U.S. Court Watch 06/20/2018

    Track Palin was formally accepted into a diversion court program Tuesday after assaulting his father, the former first gentleman of the state of Alaska, so severely it left him bleeding from the head.Palin, the son of 2008 Republican vice presidentia...

  • Outgoing Indiana Senate president gets major law firm job

    Outgoing Indiana Senate president gets major law firm job

    U.S. Court Watch 06/19/2018

    The outgoing Republican leader of the Indiana Senate is taking a new job at a high-power law firm.Senate President Pro Tem David Long of Fort Wayne joined Ice Miller as a partner on Friday. He is joining the firm's public affairs wing.The firm says h...