By Ayhan Simsek

BERLIN

A senior lawyer representing victims of the far-right terrorist group said on Sunday that they were expecting heavy sentences for the suspects in one of the major neo-Nazi trials in Germany.

The Higher Regional Court in Munich will rule on Wednesday on the murder of eight Turkish immigrants, a Greek citizen and a German policewoman by the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) between 2000 and 2007.

Lawyer Carsten Ilius told Anadolu Agency that during the five year-long trial, the court received sufficient evidence that showed the role of NSU’s last surviving member Beate Zschaepe in the crimes committed by the group.

“I expect that the court would sentence Beate Zschaepe to life imprisonment as requested by the prosecutors,” he said.

The prosecutors accused her of being a co-founder of the NSU terror cell, and of complicity in all the murders committed by the group.

Ilius said, among the four suspected accomplices, Ralf Wohlleben and Andre Emminger were likely to be handed jail terms between 12 to 13 years.

Two other suspects -- Holger G. and Carsten S. -- who assisted the NSU members in the past, but later cooperated with the police and gave some insights about the far-right extremists, were expected to be given lighter sentences.

The shadowy neo-Nazi group NSU was only revealed in 2011, when two members -- Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Bohnhardt -- reportedly committed suicide after an unsuccessful bank robbery and later police found guns and propaganda in their apartment.

Zschaepe has so far denied any role in the killings and tried to lay the blame on her friends.

The scandal surrounding the NSU has led to widespread criticism of police and security agencies in Germany, which were accused by opposition parties of tolerating right-wing extremists, stereotyping and discrimination against immigrants.

Until 2011, Germany’s police and intelligence services excluded any racial motive for the murders and instead treated immigrant families as suspects in the case, questioning them over alleged connections with mafia groups and drug traffickers.

While recent revelations have shown that German domestic intelligence agency had dozens of informants who had contacts with the NSU suspects, officials insisted that they had no prior information about the NSU terror cell and its suspected role in the killings.