NSU trial: The statement by Carsten S.
Keeps covered: Carsten S. in the process hall in Munich with his lawyer
© Peter Kneffel / dpa"Then we would come to you, Mr. S.", says the presiding judge Manfred Götzl. It is now early afternoon. For the fourth time that day, he turns to the defendant in the middle bank, who for hours nervously shuffles a neatly folded sheet of paper in front of him. Carsten S. nods, opens his laptop. But again Götzl is interrupted. The Zschäpe defender Wolfgang Heer presses the microphone button. He wants the interrogation to be recorded verbatim. Götzl interrupts the session again for ten minutes. Carsten S. looks briefly at his defender Johannes Pausch next to him. Then he works his computer again.
The court upheld the refusal of the logging request. Now nobody interrupts anymore.
Götzl laughs at Carsten S., he seems almost solved. Almost as if it were now easy for the 33-year-old to speak as the first defendant in the NSU trial. Talking about himself - and about the other two defendants sitting just a few feet away from him. Beate Zschäpe and Ralf Wohlleben, which he heavily burdened with his statement.
Carsten S. has experienced this before, this waiting to hear everything from the heart. 18 months ago, when the faces of Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe flickered across all screens. When in Germany a right-wing terrorist cell called NSU confessed to ten murders and two explosive attacks. Nine of the murders committed with a Ceska. With the weapon Carsten S. had once brought them.
I can only change, and I have.
That was more than ten years ago. Years in which Carsten S. reinvented himself. In which he became a social worker from neo-Nazi. From one who tried in a man's world to suppress his masculine desires, to one who in Dusseldorf Aids help prevention "to the gay man brings," as he describes himself on the website. One who openly avoids his past, one who writes in his diary: "I can not undo my past activities, I can only change, and I have."
In November 2011, he breaks down in the kitchen of the shared apartment in front of his partner. He says he has something to do with right-wing terror. Again and again he searches for news about the trio at his computer during this time, stores pictures on his hard disk. His partner and his friends, who are later heard by the BKA, describe him as nervous, irritable, inaccessible during this time. At a birthday party he gets drunk with champagne, breaks out of it. He tells his colleague that he once received an order to deliver something and that was just this weapon. Since the federal prosecutor's office has long been against him. He does not know that, but he suspects it. S. wants to face - but the day before comes the SEK
At the end of January he writes a letter.
"Values ... I left the right-wing scene in 2000. Since then, I have distanced myself from it and detest all sorts of right-wing, racist and extremist ideas, and I have no knowledge of any crimes that originated from this group I do not say so, because I started a new life 11 years ago, please understand that, sincerely, CS "
He does not send the letter, but he makes an appointment with his lawyer to face the police. It does not come to that. On February 1, 2012, at 5:57, the day before the appointment, a special unit storms his apartment. They tie up his life companion, search the rooms. Exactly one hour later, he is taken away and flown by helicopter to Karlsruhe.
He says comprehensively, again and again. He provides the federal prosecutor with one of the most important pieces of evidence for their indictment. For Carsten S. it is a journey into the past. Once he says, "I thought I would never have to deal with Carsten back then, he was gone." In the interrogation protocol is factually noted: "The accused is crying".
In hall A101 in front of Richter Götzl it is difficult for him to remember precisely. Again and again he says phrases like, "I can not recover," or "his memory was full," as if his brain was a hard drive. At the same time Carsten S. works very hard. Things he only vaguely remembers, he has tried to reconstruct using the Internet. Then he says, "I got the research." He wants to do everything right, asks the judge several times, what exactly wants to hear from him now.
You notice quickly, Carsten S. has learned to explain himself. He has found his own explanation for how he even slipped into the right-wing scene, which he calls today just a "filthy scene".
He tells the judge how he comes back to Jena after a failed apprenticeship as a pastry chef. As a real friend fascinated him, he had liked him, that's why he made friends with him. He plays the "Zillertaler Turkenjäger" before him and other neo-Nazi music. Soon he goes on NPD demos. He meets Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt. They used to be in his apartment, he tells the judge. He remembered that, because he had brought plastic bags for her combat boots, to pull over, so they could start their shoes.
But he misses concrete details about his involvement in the Thuringian Homeland Security and the NPD. How did he come to found the "base" of the Young National Democrats (JN), the youth organization of the NPD in Jena, asked him judge Götzl. Carsten S. replies: "I do not remember if that was decided by Ralf Wohlleben, maybe I did not become a treasurer because I had difficulties with math." He was also in the conversation for the national leadership of the NPD, why, he does not remember.
Even "the with the weapon," he tells almost casuallyas if it was just another little stoop job he was supposed to do for the three submerged ones. At the end of 1998 or beginning of 1999 he was asked by Ralf Wohlleben and André K., another head of the Thüringer Heimatschutz, if he could help the "three". The two leading cadres were afraid to be monitored themselves. Carsten S., agreed, pleased to be "something". To be trusted by the high-ranking people "that was a good feeling," he once said in a hearing.
Help, which meant talking to Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt - first in a phone booth, then with a cell phone, which S. got extra for it. The conspiratorial calls ran over a mailbox, on which the "Uwes", as S. calls them in the interrogation, "Order" for him. Sometimes it was said, "all o.k.", then they wanted money, then a motorcycle. When Carsten S. had heard the news, he went to Ralf Wohlleben, who lived opposite and reported. They stole the motorcycle together, but it was stolen again. He also went to Beate Zschäpes apartment at the behest of the three, took along identity papers and files. Then the weapon came. The "Uwes" wanted a German make as possible, with ammunition, as Carsten S. tells it.
He ordered the gun on Wohlleben's instructions in Madley's right-hand scene store in Jena. He gets a ceska - with silencer. Store them briefly in the bed in his nursery and then bring them to Chemnitz, where Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt pick him up from the train station.
Whether he could arrange the time, asks Richter Götzl. At some point between the passed driver's license and the beginning of his work as a car painter it must have been, says Carsten S. Sometime in April 2000.
I had a positive feeling.
Götzl wants to know from Carsten S. what he thought. "I trusted the Three," he says. "I had a positive feeling that they are not doing anything wrong."
What did he even know about the "three," the judge persistently asks. "Nothing," replies Carsten S. That they have disappeared, "run away" because they have found tube bomb dummies with them. Because they once hung a Jewish doll on a highway bridge. At the exit S. becomes plastic again
Just as Carsten S. plays down the three later terrorists in his own perception, he also downplayed his own involvement in the right-wing scene. Others testified that he was involved in strategy discussions. He knew that parts of the scene were radicalized. But today, on the first day of the trial, he remains vague.
His exit, however, he describes again plastically. The movie "A beautiful thing" about a gay coming-out, which he saw in the spring of 2000, gave him courage. He wanted to live gay, but understood that that would not have been possible in the scene. Also, a prison stay in August 2000, when he was taken into custody around the Rudolf Hess Memorial for ten days, have purified him, he says. And that Ralf Wohlleben then laughed at him: "Why are you catching yourself too?" Or that someday said, "I would be sick if other people would say about me, I'm gay." Other reasons, such as doubts about the right ideology, he does not cite. Even remorse does not show Carsten S. on this day.
For the ChroniquesDuVasteMonde at the NSU trial site is Lena fight. She is currently reporting for ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com and stern.de.
