) and then their flatmate burned their house down. During the investigation more and more evidence came up that something much bigger was going on. DVDs full of incriminating evidence and even murder weapons were found in the rubble. What came to light is that these three (or more) people apparently went on an anti-immigrant motivated killing spree for 13 years and robbed 14 banks. And somehow the thuringian secret police is involved.source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 47,00.htmlGerman authorities face scores of questions after the discovery that a neo-Nazi terrorist cell murdered immigrants and robbed banks for over a decade without anyone apparently knowing it existed. There are growing calls for a reform of the security services. In a strange twist, it emerged that an intelligence agent was at the scene of one of the crimes.
Info
The discovery that a neo-Nazi group was behind the murders of several immigrants during a six-year killing spree is threatening to erupt into a full-blown scandal for Germany's security services which face awkward questions about their failure to tackle right-wing terrorism.
Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday described the emergence of right-wing terrorism as a "disgrace to Germany" and pledged a thorough investigation.
The "National Socialist Underground," consisting of at least three members, two men and a woman, has claimed responsibility for the killing of eight Turks and one Greek man between 2000 and 2006, as well as the murder of a German policewoman in 2007, and two bombings in which more than 20 people, primarily with immigration backgrounds, were injured.
In a bizarre twist, politicians on Tuesday called for an urgent investigation into reports that an employee of the domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, was at the scene of one of the crimes -- the killing of 21-year-old Halit Y. in an Internet cafe in Kassel on April 6, 2006.
That fact is not new -- the employee was interviewed by police years ago and eliminated from their enquiries. But even if it is found to be irrelevant, the development makes the case even more embarrassing to the agency, which is under intense fire for having been apparently unaware of the presence of a murderous neo-Nazi cell in Germany for over a decade.
The agent, reportedly described as "Little Adolf" by colleagues because he himself held far-right views, told police at the time that he was in the Internet cafe by chance, to seek contact with women via chat rooms, and that he didn't see the killing, which happened in another part of the cafe. It is unclear if he left the cafe shortly before the shooting or if he didn't hear the shots because the killers used a silencer.
Officials said, however, that the man was close to the scenes of four of the other shootings. Hans-Peter Uhl, a member of Merkel's Christian Democrats, said on Tuesday that the behavior of the agent raised "considerable questions." The agent was fired and now works for the local government authority in the western state of Hesse.
Chilling DVD
The two men in the terrorist trio, Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, were found dead on Nov. 4 in a camper van in the eastern city of Eisenach after having apparently committed suicide. The woman, Beate Zschäpe, turned herself into the police after having apparently set fire to a villa in the eastern town of Zwickau in which the trio had lived.
Police searching the burnt-out house found four DVDs, packed and ready to be sent to the Left Party, several news organizations and Islamic cultural centers, in which the group bragged about the killings, poked fun at the police, and showed photos of blood-soaked victims, apparently taken by the killers themselves. The murdered men were all shopkeepers with two of them running doner kebab shops. As a result, the murders became known as the Doner Killings.
For years, police had insisted that the killings were committed by the Turkish mafia or shadowy nationalist groups and had effectively ruled out a far-right link. Muslim groups and the children of the men who died have accused the authorties of being blind to the threat of far-right violence, and having focused too heavily in recent years on combating Islamist terrorism.
Victim's Daughter Criticizes Police
Gamze K., 22, the daughter of Mehmet K. who was shot dead in his kiosk in Dortmund on April 4, 2006, recalled how the police speculated that her father had gambling debts or was killed by a protection racket or the Turkish mafia.
"We were suddenly under suspicion," she told Bild newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday. The police kept looking for dodgy business dealings supposedly done by my father. The police didn't take seriously our suspicion that it could have been neo-Nazis."
"I think something's wrong here," she said. "Why did the attackers suddenly kill each other? It wasn't just the three of them, there are influential men behind them."
The case has prompted urgent calls for a reform of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which was set up to combat extremist groups and protect the democratic order in postwar Germany. It has 16 regional departments, one for each of Germany's federal states, and the department for the state of Thuringia, where the trio lived, has come under particular scrutiny.
Terrorists Were on Police Files
According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, Böhnhardt, Mundlos and Zschäpe were known to the agency's Thuringia department in the 1990s, when they became involved with the neo-Nazi scene there. They built fake bombs and hoarded weapons and explosives, but authorities lost sight of them in January 1998, when they went underground and embarked on a 13-year spree of murder, bombings and a suspected total of 14 bank robberies.
The case has also called into question the agency's practice of running paid informants in the neo-Nazi scene and in the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD). Critics are saying the system evidently isn't working, and that it may even be unintentionally funding the activities of the far right.
For example, the Thuringia agency paid a total of 200,000 marks (€102,258) to a man named only as Tino B. The man is the head of Thuringia Homeland Protection, a neo-Nazi group that the three terrorists belonged to in the 1990s. He doesn't appear to have warned the authorities about his three dangerous comrades.
The presence of paid informants is controversial for another reason -- it thwarted a legal bid to outlaw the NPD in 2003 when the Constitutional Court ruled that the presence of agency informants, some in senior positions within the party, would prejudice the case.
Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Monday for a review into whether the NPD should be banned. The party is seen as a flagship of the neo-Nazi scene in Germany. But to have any chance of succes, a legal bid to outlaw the NPD would require severing ties with informants, effectively sacrificing the authorities' ability to monitor the inner workings of the party.
Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has called for better coordination between the regional and national security authorities.
Scores of Questions
There are many unanswered questions in this case, the most pressing being whether the NSU had more members or helpers within the far-right scene. One suspected helper, a forklift driver named only as Holger G., was taken into custody on Monday on suspicion of helping the trio by giving them his driver's license in 2007 and his passport four months ago. There may well be more. Some have also wondered how the group financed itself. Their bank robberies since 1999 are reported to have raised up to €70,000 -- not nearly enough to live on over that time period.
Further questions surround the apparent suicides of Böhnhardt and Mundlos in their camper van. One of them was reportedly shot in the chest, the tabloid Bild reported -- an unusual suicide method. Also, both died from rifle bullets. Pistols are more usual in suicides.
The killing of a policewoman in 2007 in the southern city of Heilbronn is also a mystery. She was shot in the head while sitting in her car. Her colleague was also shot and seriously injured. Why take the huge risk of killing a police officer? Why did the killers hold on to weapons that would incriminate them? Investigators searching the burnt-out camper van and the Zwickau apartment found the police officers' Heckler & Koch P 2000 pistols and the Ceska 7.65 millimetre Browning used in the Doner killings. They also found the policewoman's handcuffs, her pepperspray and her Victorinox Swiss Army knife. Were they kept as trophies?
And what about the DVDs? How did they survive a fire that even melted weapons? "According to our official information the DVDs were secured in the rubble of the Zwickau flat," says one investigator. "But I admit that this fact raises questions."
Finally, are there more neo-Nazi terror cells out there? Anti-racism groups say right-wing extremism has been allowed to fester in parts of eastern Germany, with neo-Nazis left in charge of running the voluntary fire departments, organizing youth leisure activities and even running citizen's advice bureaus for welfare claimants in rural regions that have suffered from depopulation and economic decline since unification in 1990.
That is fertile ground, experts say, for violent cliques to get together and to graduate from beating up foreigners to planning murders and bomb attacks.
source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 13,00.htmlFourth Suspected Terror-Cell Member Detained
Photo Gallery: Fourth Terror Suspect Taken Into Custody
Photos
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After the arrest of a fourth suspect on Sunday, there is speculation that the neo-Nazi group calling itself the National Socialist Underground may have been bigger than initially suspected. According to investigators, Holger G., who apparently helped the group with documents and vehicles, was a well-known member of the far-right scene in Hanover.
Info
The revelations about a Zwickau-based neo-Nazi trio who apparently carried out a series of murders over a period of years have shocked Germany. Now there is much speculation about the role of Holger G., the possible fourth member of the group.
Holger G. was arrested on Sunday and brought before a judge at Germany's Federal Court of Justice on Monday, who ordered him to be detained in custody. The German Federal Prosecutor's Office, which has now taken charge of the investigation, wanted Holger G. detained on suspicion of membership in a terrorist group. However the court's investigating judge only authorized G. to be detained on suspicion of supporting a terrorist organization.
SPIEGEL ONLINE
The Zwickau Cell: On the Trail of the Neo-Nazi Terrorists
Holger G. is suspected of helping a neo-Nazi group calling itself the National Socialist Underground (NSU) which is thought to be responsible for a 2000-2006 murder series dubbed the "doner killings" as well as the 2007 murder of a policewoman in Heilbronn.
Holger G., 37, allegedly joined forces with the neo-Nazi trio of Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe in 2007. Since G.'s arrest on Sunday in Lauenau near Hanover, there has been speculation that the Zwickau terrorist cell may have consisted of four or more people, rather than the three that are currently known. Like the others, Holger G. also has a history of involvement in the right-wing extremist scene.
Low Profile
A search of G.'s home provided further support for the suspicions against him, said Rainer Griesbaum, Germany's acting federal public prosecutor general, on Monday. Holger G. is alleged to have given Böhnhardt, Mundlos and Zschäpe his driver's license to use as well as his passport about four months ago. He is also said to have rented recreational vehicles for the group on several occasions. Mundlos and Böhnhardt are believed to have shot each other in a camper in the city of Eisenach on Nov. 4 following a bank robbery and are thought to have used recreational vehicles in connection with other crimes. Investigators are now looking into the question of whether Holger G. was directly involved in the murders allegedly committed by the NSU.
In recent years, Holger G. had been living in the village of Lauenau near Hanover, where he kept a low profile and apparently cultivated a respectable appearance. In the past, however, he had openly associated with the neo-Nazi scene in Hanover, even if he had not been a leader.
According to the Lower Saxony branch of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, G. was known as a hanger-on in the far-right scene. As far as authorities knew, he was active in the scene only up until 2004, the head of the agency in Lower Saxony, Hans-Werner Wargel, said on Monday. Wargel added that the agency had deleted its data on G. in 2009, as required by law. It was possible that Holger G. had deliberately gone underground in 2004 and chose to no longer appear in public with right-wing extremists, said the Lower Saxony interior minister, Uwe Schünemann.
Extremely Violent
Holger G. originally comes from the city of Jena in the eastern German state of Thuringia. Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe had also earlier lived in Jena. It is unclear when G. moved to the western state of Lower Saxony.
Holger G. repeatedly took part in neo-Nazi events. He is known to have participated in a meeting of right-wing extremists in Hildesheim, a city in Lower Saxony, around the New Year in 1998/1999. The local neo-Nazi scene there was considered to be extremely violent and well organized. Pictures of paramilitary training camps can be found on the Internet, and extremists there are reported to have trained with live ammunition.
The participants at the 1998/1999 meeting included important representatives of neo-Nazi groups from Langenhagen, a town next to Hanover, as well as a delegation from Celle, also in Lower Saxony. More significantly, members of a group calling itself Thüringer Heimatschutz ("Thuringian Homeland Defense"), which Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt belonged to, were also present. Holger G. was definitely present at the meeting, according to one expert on the Hanover neo-Nazi scene. The event could have been his first contact with right-wing extremists in western Germany.
According to sources in the security forces, G. took part in a neo-Nazi demonstration in 1999 against an exhibition on war crimes committed by the German army, the Wehrmacht, during World War II. In 2003, he attended a far-right concert.
According to a report by the German public broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, investigators in Thuringia had first become aware of Holger G. in 1997. The broadcaster reported that G. was suspected of being involved in sending a series of fake letter bombs in Jena. At the time, authorities suspected a neo-Nazi group called the Kameradschaft Jena, to which Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt also belonged, of being behind the attacks. The public prosecutor apparently investigated a total of 15 suspects, but the case was later dropped due to lack of evidence.
'Brutal Gang'
According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, Holger G. and his brother Dirk belonged for a long time to a neo-Nazi group that was active in the Hanover district of Wiesenau. One investigator said that it was a "brutal gang" of skinheads and thugs who were suspected of numerous crimes. It is still unclear what role, if any, Dirk G., who is said to be 10 years older than Holger, played in connection with the Zwickau cell.
While living in Hanover, Holger G. had been responsible for registering a number of rallies and information stands, the investigator said. But after he moved to the quiet village of Lauenau, he apparently kept a low profile. "Perhaps he had been told to stop making public appearances," speculated the official. Authorities currently cannot explain why the three alleged far-right terrorists got Holger G. involved to rent vehicles, given that the trio appears to have had fake IDs. "It's possible that they simply did not trust these documents," said the investigator.
Anti-fascist activists still remember the brothers well today. "Both of them were known to the authorities and openly took part in the (neo-Nazi) scene," recalls one activist. Both men were apparently registered as living in Hanover. Dirk G. still lives in the city, the activist said.
Relatively Calm
According to the activist, the neo-Nazi groups in Hanover, Langenhagen and the surrounding area were extremely active up until four or five years ago. There were repeated attacks in public, and neo-Nazis marched through the streets under the leadership of a now-defunct group called Kameradschaft Celle-Hannover 77. Holger G. was regularly seen taking part, said the activist. It is not clear if he was a full member of the Kameradschaft Celle-Hannover 77 group, however.
The neo-Nazi activity only abated in 2005 when police and security agencies began to take tougher action against the well-established neo-Nazi groups known as Kameradschaften (literally "comradeships"). In recent years, the intelligence agencies have noted that such well-organized groups are on the decline. They are being replaced by more informal groupings that do not meet up on a regular basis but which only get together for events such as demonstrations.
"Today it is much calmer than it was a few years ago," says Marco Brunotte, a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament for the center-left Social Democrats who is an expert on right-wing extremism.
There is more information and a lot of background info here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 69,00.html
My take on this:
Wow. We are either seeing a case of massive incompetence (both normal and secret police) or something very very shady is going on in Thuringia. At least now no one can claim there is no threat from right-wing violence.
I wouldn't focus to much on the claim that the killings were comitted by the "turkish mafia". That's just german law enforcment standard tactic to blame everything they can on some form of organized crime. It's accepted code for "we don't want to look like fools, so it has to have been a professional." But that could als explain how this killing spree could go on for so long: they weren't even looking for germanic looking people.
