Neo-Nazi terror group supporter on trial in Germany

BERLIN

A German court opened proceedings on Wednesday against a woman accused of supporting a neo-Nazi terrorist group responsible for a decade-long murder spree targeting immigrants.

Susann Eminger, 44, from Zwickau, appeared before the Higher Regional Court in Dresden but refused to address the charges. "She will not comment for the time being," one of her defense attorneys told the court.

Federal prosecutors accuse Eminger of providing her health insurance card to Beate Zschaepe, a central figure in the far-right NSU terror group, while she was living underground. She also allegedly allowed the terror group to use her personal details to buy train passes.

This is the first new NSU trial at the federal level since the major Munich trial concluded in 2018, when Zschaepe and the group's co-founders, neo-Nazis Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Bohnhardt, were convicted..

Eminger is the wife of Andre Eminger, who received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence in 2018 for supporting the terror group. He has already served his sentence. The trial is expected to continue for several months, with dozens of hearing dates scheduled through June 2026.

NSU's racist murders

The NSU is believed to have been founded by neo-Nazis Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Bohnhardt, and Beate Zschaepe. The trio lived underground from 1998 with fake identities.

The German public first learned of the NSU’s existence and its role in the murders on Nov. 4, 2011, when two members of the group, Mundlos and Bohnhardt, committed suicide after an unsuccessful bank robbery. The police found evidence in their apartment showing they were behind the murders.

Until 2011, Germany's police and intelligence services dismissed any racial motive for the murders and instead treated immigrant families as suspects with connections to mafia groups and drug traffickers.

Recent media revelations have shown that the country’s domestic intelligence agency BfV and its local branches had dozens of informants who had contacts with the NSU suspects in the past. But officials insisted that they had no prior information about the existence of the NSU terror cell or its role behind the killings.

The NSU scandal has initiated a broader discussion in Germany regarding institutional racism and the shortcomings of German security and intelligence organizations, which have faced criticism for underestimating the threat posed by far-right extremism.