Germany on alert as top neo-Nazi trial begins: Woman accused of being ringleader of terror group that killed ten people

Beate Zschaepe, 38, is charged with complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman

The biggest trial ever held in Germany of Neo-Nazis since WW2 will get underway in Munich today.
Security will be unparalleled for the trial of Beate Zschaepe, a female member of an extreme right-wing terror cell which killed nine immigrant businessmen and a policewoman over a 13 year period. 
The 38-year-old Miss Zschaepe has been dubbed the ‘Nazi Mare’ by the German press.
Charged with participation in all 10 executions, 15 robberies, setting up a terrorist organisation and numerous arsons, Zschaepe could expect, under normal German law, to be out after 15 years if convicted. 
But prosecutors are seeking to implement the special clause in the national law called “particularly grievous guilt” which allows the state to incarcerate particularly heinous criminals forever.
Sewers have been sealed to prevent bombs being placed near the court, snipers will be on rooftops and police leave throughout Bavaria has been cancelled.
Zschaepe, idolised by Norwegian mass-killer Anders Breivik who wrote to her advising her to use her trial to spread “right-wing propaganda,” is branded by Germany’s federal prosecutor Harald Range as being at the heart of planning and carrying out the murders.
But the trial is about so much more than her - it is about the deep national sense of shame in police failings to stop her and her group, which was composed of Zschaepe and two male sidekicks who were also her lovers.
German police and intelligence agencies are braced for an outpouring of public scorn as their collective failings are set to be exposed.

No link was ever made between the National Socialist Underground group and the killings, despite a vast covert intelligence network.

Victims of the far right terror group NSU. Top from left: Enver Simsek, Abdurrahim Ozudogru, Suleyman Taskopru, Habil Kilic and police woman Michele Kiesewetter and bottom from left : Mehmet Turgut, Ismail Yasar, Theodorus Boulgarides, Mehmet Kubasik und Halit Yozgat

Ismail Yozgat , right, and Ayse Yozgat , left, pray at a memorial event on the seventh anniversary of the murder of their son Halit, who was apparently killed by the NSU

It has led to charges that certain police and intelligence chiefs wanted to protect the NSU because they admired them, although claims of a conspiracy have been fiercely rejected.
The group was supported by a loose network of crazed neo-Nazis who dreamed of a Fourth Reich. During the killings no claim of responsibility was ever made; the assassins hoped that the randomness of the murders would strike fear into Germany’s immigrant population who would begin leaving en-masse.
They went underground in 1998 and lived from the proceeds of bank robberies across the country. The cell imploded on November 4 2011 when her male accomplices Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt botched a bank raid. In a pre-arranged plan to avoid capture, Mundlos shot his accomplice before turning the gun on himself.
Zschaepe, as instructed, blew up their hideout in the east German city of Zwickau.
But the blast and subsequent fire failed to destroy a mountain of evidence, including videotapes in which the trio boasted of their crimes. Days later, as a massive manhunt stretched across the country, she turned herself in.

DAILYMAIL