Neo-Nazi suspect Zschäpe presses charges against defense
July 24, 2015
The long-running dispute among Zschäpe and her three attorneys, Wolfgang Stahl, Wolfgang Heer und Anja Sturm, came to a head on Friday.
A spokesperson for Munich's public prosecution department said Zschäpe had accused the three defense attorney's of "violating the lawyer's duty of confidentiality." The claims will now be investigated.
The 40-year-old defendant has attempted to fire her legal team multiple times over the last year. Her applications, however, have been repeatedly denied by the court. A fourth attorney, Mathias Grasel, with whom Zschäpe seems to coordinate most closely, was appointed several weeks ago.
All three lawyers also previously asked to be withdrawn from the case, but the court rejected their application on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
Murder suspect
Zschäpe is the only known surviving member of an alleged killer trio called the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which prosecutors have blamed for 10 murders between 2000 and 2007.
The victims were all residents in Germany - eight men of Turkish origin, a Greek migrant, and a German policewoman.
The gang's two other members, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, died in 2011 in an apparent murder-suicide while hiding in a camper van after a bank robbery.
Police investigation a 'fiasco'
The case has generated heated debate in Germany, primarily because the NSU cell went undetected for over a decade despite authorities having dozens of informants in the country's right-wing extremist scene.
The trial has also raised questions of institutional bias within the German police and media, which insisted until 2011 that the murder spree was carried out by migrant crime gangs instead of a xenophobic far-right group.
A state parliamentary committee examining the police investigation of the far-right terror group labeled it a "fiasco."
ksb/sms (AFP, dpa)