NUREMBERG, West Germany -- The leader of a neo-Nazi gang that allegedly masterminded the killing of a Jewish publisher and his mistress said Monday his arrest disrupted plans to set up a weapons factory in Lebanon.
Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, whose paramilitary Defense Sport Group moved to Lebanon when it was banned from West Germany in 1980, told the public prosecutor at his murder trial that he decided to set up a pistol factory when he found he could not easily obtain the weapons in Lebanon for his right-wing group.
He said he thought there would be a market for the weapons among Arabs.
'If you had not prevented me, the factory would be working today,' he said.
Hoffmann, 46, was arrested in 1981 at Frankfurt airport during a covert trip to Germany from the Middle East.
The prosecution says that while in Lebanon, Hoffmann's group trained under the protection of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Hoffmann has repeatedly denied that the group had any contact with Palestinians.
Hoffmann admitted a prosecution allegation he had counterfeited $2 million in U.S. currency in Lebanon, but he denied that that enterprise was launched with PLO help and said most of the fake money never found its way into circulation.
Besides counterfeiting, Hoffmann, a graphic artist, is charged with two counts of murder for allegedly ordering the December 1980 murders of publisher and local Jewish leader Shlomo Lewin, 69, and his mistress, Frieda Poeschke, 57, in Erlangen, in central Germany.
Hoffmann's girlfriend, Franziska Birkmannis, is accused of being an accessory to the killings, which are alleged to have been carried out by a now dead member of Hoffmann's group to 'impress' Hoffmann's Palestinian associates.
