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