Turkish Media Barred From Neo-Nazi Trial
Ankara, April 3 (AZERTAC). Munich’s Higher Regional Court prohibited Turkish media from being in the court to report on the trial of German neo-Nazis, members of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), accused of murdering eight Turks and one Greek.
“It is a scandal, it is shame,” the President of the Turkish community of Germany, Kenan Kolat told the newspaper Berliner Zeitung, after it emerged that none of the 50 media accreditation for the trial have been granted to the Turkish media.
This came three weeks before the trial of the 37-year-old Beate Zschдpe, the last surviving member of NSU, and of four others accused as her partners, who were indicted for the racist murders from 2000-2006 and a policewoman in 2007.
Some 123 media sources applied for accreditation, among them eight from Turkey. Those not assigned to a courtroom seat still get accreditation cards, but no guaranteed spots. But the Turkish media sources won’t be the only ones jockeying for coverage from outside the courtroom; news agencies AP and AFP, along with the BBC and the New York Times are on the alternate list too, the newspaper Spiegel reports.
The Munich court defended its accreditation process, saying that press passes were awarded in the order the applications were received. They also announced this approach ahead of time so that journalists would be prepared, a court spokeswoman said, adding that the only alternative would have been drawing names by lot. The courtroom for the trial beginning on April 17 has already been renovated to accommodate the huge interest in the case, according to Spiegel.
Kolat has called the court and the politicians in charge to reconsider their decision and to “find a solution.” German journalists expressed solidarity with their Turkish colleagues and the German Journalists Association (DJV) demanded that the authorities find seats for Turkish and Greek mass media. “We would make a huge fuss if this were to happen the other way around - if no German journalist were allowed in the courtroom in a foreign case,” the DJV’s President Michael Konken added.
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