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The judge in the NSU trial
Photo: MARC MUELLER / EPA-EFE / REX / Shutterstock
The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) considers the reasons for the judgment of the Munich Higher Regional Court (OLG) in the proceedings against the NSU terrorist group to be unnecessarily long.
The verdict is more than 3000 pages long.
In the appeal decision, the BGH writes that the "multiple repetition of the same notification for each individual act" leads to "an extraordinary extent of the grounds of the judgment that is not objectively necessary and is detrimental to legibility."
The judgment of the Higher Regional Court deals with dozens of crimes, including 10 murders and 15 robberies, mostly serial offenses.
Several passages can be found in the grounds of the judgment 18 times or more word for word, only the respective offense is described in a differentiated manner.
The repetitions made the "decision not legally erroneous", decided the Federal Court of Justice.
He essentially confirmed the judgment of the OLG.
The trial against NSU member Beate Zschäpe and four supporters lasted more than five years, from May 2013 to the verdict in July 2018. Beate Zschäpe had been sentenced to life imprisonment, the other defendants also received imprisonment.
All of the defendants had appealed.