A GERMAN court yesterday 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 two and a half and 10 years. Presiding judge Manfred Goetzl said that Zschaepe’s guilt weighed particularly heavily, meaning she is likely to serve at least a 15-year sentence. 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 of 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. The group evaded arrest for almost 14 years, thanks to a network of supporters and repeated mistakes by German security agencies. (SD-Agencies) |