German legislators subpoena neo-Nazi gang member for inquiry

Feb 16, 2012, 16:46 GMT

Erfurt, Germany - A detained woman who is suspected of a role in a string of hate killings by a neo-Nazi gang in Germany was sent a subpoena Thursday to appear before a parliamentary inquiry.

Beate Zschaepe, 37, is the remaining living member of a trio who police say shot dead eight ethnic Turkish shopkeepers, a Greek man and a policewoman as well as robbing banks during 13 years on the run. The other two died in November in an apparent murder-suicide.

Her lawyer, Wolfgang Heer, rejected the subpoena from the commission of inquiry appointed by the state assembly of Thuringia. He called it 'absurd'.

Police say Zschaepe, who is in prison in Cologne, has exercised her right to remain silent as an inquiry continues into the previously unsolved murders which lasted from 2000 to 2007.

Germans remain shocked and puzzled by the apparent fanaticism of Zschaepe and the two men in the gang, all natives of Thuringia, an eastern German state.

The inquiry, which is to sit in public in Erfurt, the state capital, is investigating why police and domestic intelligence failed to even detect the existence of the National Socialist Underground and whether there was a cover-up by officials.

The panel has powers to impose jail terms on people who refuse to appear or testify.

Dorothea Marx, the inquiry chairwoman, said Zschaepe would have no legal right to silence because she would not be asked about any crimes, but only whether she had dealings with undercover police, state intelligence agents or informants while she was on the run.