Beate Zschaepe, the sole surviving member of the neo-Nazi gang National Socialist Underground (NSU), is expected to testify for the first time in two years in today's hearing in Germany over the gang's murders of several Turks.
Zschaepe, 40, has only uttered short answers to the judge since she first appeared before a Munich court and will present a written testimony to the court. Her lawyer, Mathias Grasel, will read the statement. Grasel said she would answer questions in written form.
Ralf Wohlleben, charged with aiding the NSU, also plans to testify at the trial. Both Zschaepe and Wohlleben announced last month through their lawyers that they would speak up though it is not clear why they decided to break their silence after two years.
Zschaepe is charged with ten counts of murder for the slaying of eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, carrying out bomb attacks in neighborhoods heavily populated by migrants and a string of robberies.
After the discovery of the NSU, it was revealed in the trial that the gang had connections to informants recruited by the German intelligence agency, which raised the question of whether the intelligence officials had knowledge of the gang's activities and deliberately ignored it.
The trial on the NSU has also drawn criticism for the little progress it has made and lack of inquiry into the intelligence's role in disregarding the gang's activities. The trial is already muddled with a dispute between Zschaepe and her lawyers who repeatedly sought to step down from defense duties.
Carsten Ilius, a lawyer for the family of Mehmet Kubaşık, a Turkish man murdered by NSU in 2006, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that he did not expect Zschaepe's testimony would radically change the course of the trial. "I believe she does it out of desperation as witnesses finish their testimonies and the jury approaches a verdict," he said. Aziz Sarıyar, lawyer for the family of İsmail Yaşar who was killed in Nuremberg in 2005, told AA Zschaepe was apparently "panicked" and sought to have the court commute her sentence. "She will either reveal a lot about NSU or may concoct new lies as she is someone accustomed to living a deceitful life with fake IDs and lies to conceal her identity while she was a member of the gang," he said.
