National Socialist Underground

Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel

Germany’s government Friday rejected charges that its police were racist that arose from an inquiry into authorities’ decade-long failure to uncover a neo-Nazi cell accused of shooting dead nine immigrants.

“The federal police do not behave in racist fashion and have not done so in the past,” said Jens Teschke, a spokesman for Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich. “We strongly reject this allegation.”

He spoke one day after an official inquiry concluded that the failure to find the cell accused in the slayings of one Greek and eight Turks was because of incompetence in the police and intelligence services.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, welcomed the findings, saying, “The results will be thoroughly analysed, in particular the measures for reform that were proposed.”

The inquiry found the police trapped themselves in a false theory that a Turkish gang had formed in Germany to kill compatriots.

One member of the 11-member commission of inquiry, Social Democratic legislator Eva Hoegl, upset police unions by telling the media the disarray resulted from “structures of suspicion and prejudice in the police that often have a racist stamp.”

However, the example she gave was not connected to the botched inquiry into the National Socialist Underground (NSU) but claims last year that a small, specialized force that patrols trains and airports tends to ask black people to show their identity more than whites.

The force, the Federal Police, denied prejudice.

“We heard the allegations against the Federal Police …. with utter astonishment,” Teschke said. “The Federal Police had nothing to do with [the NSU inquiry].”

The inquiry chairman, Sebastian Edathy, earlier also denied the police were fundamentally racist, saying, “I don’t believe we have institutional racism, but I do believe that in everyday work, the police need to question their own stereotypes.”

Edathy, an opposition Social Democrat, said remedies included hiring more ethnic minorities to change the mentality of the police.

The inquiry into the killings from 2000 to 2007 ran parallel to a trial in Munich at which Beate Zschaepe, 38, is charged as an accomplice to the slayings. She is the only survivor of the three-member NSU. Two men died in a murder-suicide in 2011 that brought the gang to light. – dpa

Germany’s decade-long failure to uncover a neo-Nazi cell blamed in the killings of immigrants was the fault of incompetence in the police and intelligence services, a commission of inquiry was expected to report Thursday.

Eight Turkish shopkeepers, a Greek man and a policewoman were shot to death in attacks in multiple cities from 2000 to 2007, but police only connected the crimes to the self-styled National Socialist Underground (NSU) four years after the last slaying.

The commission, made up of members of parliament, is to publish its findings after a year and a half of hearings and is to recommend reforms.

Sebastian Edathy, an opposition Social Democrat who chaired the inquiry, said the committee determined that the most horrifying suspicion, that detectives or secret agents might have protected the gang of two men and one woman, was unfounded.

“We did not find any evidence whatsoever that the authorities knew who was behind the crimes or looked the other way or even deliberately helped the perpetrators,” Edathy said. “We followed up every clue.”

Instead, the committee was expected to attribute the failure to across-the-board incompetence by about three dozen squabbling investigative agencies.

“This was a failure by the authorities without historical parallel,” Edathy said.

“November 4, 2011, when the trio was discovered was to us what September 11, 2001, was to the Americans,” he said. “It was the day we realized that our complete security architecture in Germany was not attuned to things like far-right terrorism.”

Germany monitors the wider neo-Nazi movement, which numbers about 5,000, and pays insiders to be informers but overlooked the cell.

The 1,000-page report was expected to conclude that police and agents failed to follow up clues, such as sightings of the neo-Nazis; worked under false assumptions because of institutional racism; and refused to share data with one another because of turf wars.

A parliamentary debate on the report was scheduled September 2.

The two accused gunmen died in a killing-cum-suicide before they could be caught. A judicial finding of their responsibility in the crimes was expected at the end of the current trial of Beate Zschape, the female survivor of the trio. She is charged as an accomplice to murder. – dpa

Tag: National Socialist Underground

Germany rejects allegations of police racism

German parliamentary report on neo-Nazi cell expected today