Beate Zschäpe must remain in prison at least until 2035

NSU terrorist Beate Zschäpe must remain in prison at least until 2035. The Munich Higher Regional Court set a minimum term of 24 years for Zschäpe, who has been in prison since 2011, as the court announced on Tuesday. Pre-trial detention is taken into account. Zschäpe admitted to the court that she knew about the NSU murders in advance.

According to the court, the federal prosecutor's office had demanded at least 25 years in prison for Zschäpe, and her defense attorney had demanded 20 years. According to the decision that has now been made and is not yet legally binding, the 51-year-old Zschäpe could not be released from prison until she is 60 years old at the earliest.

Zschäpe was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Munich NSU trial in July 2018 as an accomplice in the murders of nine migrants and a policewoman by the National Socialist Underground (NSU). In addition, the Munich Higher Regional Court determined the particular gravity of the guilt, which precludes release from prison after 15 years. The 51-year-old is serving her sentence in the Chemnitz Correctional Facility (JVA) in Saxony.

The Munich Higher Regional Court judged in favor of Zschäpe that, unlike in the actual NSU trial, she has now admitted her involvement in nine out of ten NSU murders. The court referred to Zschäpe's testimony in a trial against a woman accused of being an NSU supporter and to a personal hearing by the Senate. In doing so, she basically admitted her guilt. In addition, Zschäpe “expressed shame at having destroyed or massively impaired the lives of innocent, arbitrarily selected people,” explained the OLG.

She distanced herself from the National Socialist ideas underlying her actions. Their behavior in prison provided no evidence of the continued existence of right-wing extremist attitudes.

The National Socialist Underground (NSU) was a right-wing extremist terrorist cell, to which ten murders are attributed, as well as at least two bomb attacks and a large number of armed robberies. Zschäpe lived undetected underground with the NSU terrorists Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos for years.

The two men shot nine migrants and a policewoman and allegedly took their own lives in 2011 after a failed bank robbery. Zschäpe then turned himself in to the police.