After a 10-year trial on July 11, 2018, Beate Chepe, who was a member of a neo-Nazi gang, was found guilty of 10 racially motivated killings, the BBC reports citing the BBC.
Beata Chepe was the main defendant in the case of the murder of eight ethnic Turks, a Greek citizen and a German police officer between 2000 and 2007.
The sentence provides for automatic life imprisonment.
The connection between the murders was discovered accidentally in 2011, after an unsuccessful robbery, which led to the identification of a group of neo-Nazis. Chepe lived in an apartment in Zwickau with two men who died as a result of a probable planned joint suicide.
The bodies of Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Benhardt were found in a burnt van that was used for robbery.
Chepe, Mundlos and Benhardt formed an organization called the National Socialist underground. After the arson in their house - apparently, when trying to destroy evidence - Chepe surrendered.
The seven-year campaign of the National Socialist underground revealed serious shortcomings in Germany's surveillance system for neo-Nazis and led to a public investigation of why the police did not identify a conspiracy to kill.
Four other defendants also received prison sentences for their role in assisting the National Socialist underground band.
Ralph Wolleben was sentenced to 10 years for aiding and abetting murder - he made a pistol with a silencer.
Karsten S. , who was at that time a minor, was found guilty of handing over a gang of pistols and a silencer and received three years.
Andre E. received two years and six months for helping the terrorist group.
Holger G. received three years for issuing a birth certificate and other Uwe Mundlos identity cards.
Speaking before the verdict, Chepe's lawyer stated that she would appeal any life sentence.
During the trial, Chepe denied involvement in the murders, but stated that she felt guilty for having not done more to stop them.
Beata Chepe's mother was a citizen of the GDR. In her youth she studied dentistry in Bucharest and claimed that Beata's father was a Romanian dental student. But Chepe had never met him, and he himself denied that he was her father until his death in 2000.
Beata's relationship with her mother, who twice married after her birth, were complex. Often she left her in the care of her grandmother. During the first 15 years of her life, Beata traveled 15 times within the city of Jena and its environs.
In 1991, after the end of the 10th grade, Beata left school and began to work as an assistant artist, and then a gardener.
In 1991, Beata met the son of Professor of Informatics Uwe Mundlos, who introduced her to the neo-Nazi world of Jena. Uwe Benhardt, whose parents were a teacher and engineer, became their close friend The National National Socialist underground case covers 10 murders, two explosive attacks in Cologne, during which more than 20 people were injured, and 15 bank robberies.
The victims of the murders were mainly ethnic Turks, shot on working days from the pistol CZ 83 for seven years. The police had long suspected that the killers were also ethnic Turks from the victims' communities. Law enforcers gave the crimes the code name "Bosporus murders" in honor of the Bosphorus Strait, on the banks of which the capital of Turkey is located Istanbul. Some representatives of the German press used the pejorative term "Doner killings" - by the name of the Middle Eastern fast food Doner Kebab.
Neo-Nazi terror was not seen or perhaps deliberately ignored.
The fragmented police system of Germany with 16 different jurisdictions for 16 lands also contributed to the failure of intelligence.
Among the victims there is also one Greek - Theodoros Bulgharides, killed in 2005. The last victim was Michel Kiesewetter, an employee of the German police who was shot to death when she was sitting in her car during a break in 2007.
The connection between the murders was discovered only after years.
Chepe smiled and looked relaxed a few minutes before she was sentenced to life imprisonment. The 43-year-old woman spoke only twice during the five-year trial.
Although the convictions are likely to please the relatives of the victims, neither these trials nor a number of official requests have been able to provide answers to several fundamental questions.
How and why did the killers choose their victims?.
And why did the German authorities, who relied on paid informants from the neo-Nazi milieu and who continue to be accused of institutionalized racism, seem to do so little to protect them?.
In 2011, some German periodicals received an unusual DVD. On it, the iconic character Pink Panther in a fake cartoon showed messages from the National Socialist underground about the murders and mounted shots of attacks using explosives.
November 4, 2011 Mundlos and Benhardt robbed a bank in a German city, it was one of a series of similar robberies. But this time the police were able to pursue them in the van in which they were hiding.
Although they were armed, they did not resist - and, in the end, were found dead inside the van. Investigators believe that Mundlos fired at Benhardt before killing himself.
Chepe, remaining the only living member of the National Socialist underground, apparently set fire to an apartment where all three lived together in Zwickau. A few days later she gave up.
The fire in her house did not destroy everything, and the investigators found a copy of the DVD with the Pink Panther, linking the trio to the National Socialist underground and murders. In the ruins also found a gun, which is the alleged weapon of murder.
After that, the public learned that the neo-Nazi organization had acted with impunity for 11 years, killing 10 people and remaining unnoticed by the police.
Then came a large-scale public outcry, as well as a parliamentary investigation, which required closer monitoring of neo-Nazi actions.
In July 2015, the German parliament voted for a series of reforms that gave more powers to domestic intelligence in order to avoid the recurrence of such failures.