Neo-Nazi gang trial in Germany set to extend to 2016

A new timetable released on Tuesday revealed that the trial of a neo-Nazi gang accused of killing eight Turks in Germany will continue until at least September 2016.

The timetable provided by a court in Munich looking into the case shows it will take months before the testimony of eyewitnesses wraps up.

Beate Zschaepe, the sole surviving member of Nationalist Socialist Underground (NSU) is being tried by the court for the case entangled with strife between Zschaepe and her lawyers as well as allegations of a cover-up by German intelligence.

In yesterday's hearing, the court heard the testimony of a Swiss police officer regarding the purchase of a pistol by a Swiss citizen that ended up in the possession of far-right groups in Germany and was allegedly used as a murder weapon by NSU members. The court went to a judiciary recess until Sept. 2 after the hearing.

The NSU, believed to be comprised of Zschaepe, Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, faces charges of killing eight Turkish men, a Greek man and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, carrying out bomb attacks and armed robberies. Mundlos and Böhnhardt were found dead in an apparent suicide in a trailer in which they were hiding in 2011. Zschaepe, 40, had turned herself in after setting a house the gang stayed for some time on fire, allegedly to destroy evidence. Apart from Zschaepe, four people stand trial on charges of aiding and abetting the gang.

Zschaepe had tried to fire one of her three lawyers in earlier hearings while lawyers last month sought permission from the court to step down. The defendant had also applied to the court to investigate what she called a violation of her privacy. In July, a fourth lawyer was added to the defense team. A dispute between Zschaepe, who has not uttered a word at the hearings since the trial started in 2013, may further hinder the lengthy legal process. The court has had 219 hearings since 2013.

The trial was both a revelation and a supposed cover-up for many, as it shed light on how misguided German authorities were in wrongly tracing the killing to a mafia feud while failing to dig deeper into the connections of the NSU with the intelligence services. German intelligence services are blamed for deliberately turning a blind eye to the existence of the gang for more than a decade even though it reportedly had informants all across the neo-Nazi scene in Germany, which flourished in the 1990s.