neo nazi bank robbers

[Brown Sauce]

Investigation widens into neo-Nazi terror trio
12 Nov 2011
thelocal.de

Investigators believe a suspected far right terror cell allegedly involved in a German policewoman's killing may be linked to other unsolved crimes with anti-Semitic or racist motives. According to information obtained by the Neue Rhur/Neue Rhein Zeitung, the crimes now being looked into include a nail bomb attack on a Cologne street predominantly inhabited by Turkish people in 2004 and an attack on a group of Russian Jewish immigrants at a Düsseldorf train station in 2000. German investigators have already linked the policewoman's 2007 slaying as well as a series of previously unsolved killings of nine foreign-born food vendors and shop-owners, nicknamed the "döner murders," to the suspected neo-Nazi terrorist cell.

On Friday, federal prosecutors took over the investigation that was launched after two men killed themselves following a botched bank robbery in the city of Eisenach. Investigators searching their flat in Zwickau, Saxony found the guns used in the series of killings. Police have identified the two men as Uwe B. and Uwe M. and have arrested a third suspect, a woman identified as Beate Z. She now faces charges of murder, attempted murder, and belonging to a terrorist organization. All three came from the eastern German city of Jena and were known to be active in the Thüringer Heimatschutz , a far-right group, since the early 1990s.

The website of Der Spiegel magazine reported that the three were among a group of neo-Nazis suspected of sending letter bombs in 1997. Then in 1998, after investigators found five pipe bombs and explosives in a garage belonging to Beate Z., she and the two men disappeared. At the time the head of the Thüringer Heimatschutz was actually an informer for Thuringia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The agency has denied that there was any contact between the state authorities and the suspects.

Thomas Sippel, current president of the Thuringia Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told Focus magazine that shortly after taking office in 2000, he launched an investigation into whether the trio had ever worked as informants for the agency. He said there was no proof found of any such contacts. Monika Lazar, parliamentary spokeswoman on right-wing extremism for the Greens, said the question now was why these alleged criminals had remained undetected for so many years. “One wonders, what are the investigative authorities doing and what are undercover intelligence agents for?” she asked.

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This is a huge story in Germany at the moment.

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Right-wing terrorism triggers new calls for ban on far-right parties
Charlotte Chelsom-Pill, Gregg Benzow
14th November 2011
dw-world.de

Recent revelations have led to fresh calls for a ban on far-right political parties in Germany after police arrested a further suspect belonging to a terrorist group linked to a string of racially-motivated murders. Calls for a comprehensive ban on neo-Nazi organizations have been given fresh impetus following revelations that a far-right terror cell in all probability was responsible for a series of immigrant murders across Germany.

On Monday, the interior minister of the German state of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, said it was time for a new attempt to ban the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany, or NPD. Herrmann called the party "dangerous" and a "threat to the constitution." Dieter Graumann, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the DPA news agency that banning the NPD was "absolutely essential. The NPD avails itself of party privileges to enormous advantage. It uses the parliamentary platform to spread its poison and is being subsidized by taxpayers' money," said Graumann. The chairman of the Green party, Cem Özdemir, also said it was time to "seriously consider an NPD ban. We need to talk about the NPD and far-right radicals becoming hegemonical in many parts of Germany; in particular, in the east of the republic".

Renewed calls for a ban on neo-Nazi organizations came as the far-right terrorist group, the "National Socialist Underground" (NSU), were accused Monday of being behind two bomb attacks in Cologne. In the latest in a series of charges, new evidence has suggested members of the organization may have detonated a nail bomb in an area of Cologne highly populated by Turkish immigrants in 2004, injuring 22 people. The group was also accused of seriously injuring a 19-year old German-Iranian girl after detonating a bomb in her parent's grocery store in 2001.

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter FriedrichFriedrich referred to a "new form of terrorism"On Sunday, German police made yet another arrest in their investigation into the neo-Nazi ring. A 37-year-old man was arrested in Hamburg on suspicion of being a member of the NSU, which is also linked it to the fatal shootings of nine immigrant food vendors, as well as a policewoman in southern Germany.

Speaking in Leipzig on Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced shock at what she described as "far-right terrorism." "That is a disgrace. That shames Germany. We will do everything possible to investigate it," she said during a speech at a conference of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich also called for an investigation into how anti-subversion agents had failed to connect the murders with the right-wing extremist movement. "Now it is all about finding out whether or not more people were involved, whether there is some kind of network and finding out what dimensions all this has," Friedrich told reporters. "From all the evidence we have so far, it looks like we are experiencing a new form of far-right terrorism," he said.

Investigative authorities have come under fire in recent days for their failure to link the NSU with the string of racist attacks. Andrea Nahles, general secretary of the opposition Social Democrats, suggested in an interview with DW-TV that authorities have overlooked violent attacks from right-wing organizations. This is proof that "once again public institutions are blind in their right eye," she said. Extremism expert Bernd Wagner also warned on Monday that until now the terrorist threat of right-wing militant groups has been grossly neglected. "Anyplace a Nazi group with propensity to violence exists, there is the potential for the emergence of a violent terrorist cell," Wagner told DW-TV. The German state of Thuringia is expected to open an inquiry on Tuesday into how the state's intelligence department lost sight of the three suspected members of the NSU accused of the murders.

Sunday's arrest followed a claim by police on Friday that they were investigating a 36-year-old woman charged with arson and membership in a terrorist organization. Two other male suspects, who lived with the woman, were found dead earlier last week in a burning camping van in Eisenach, eastern Germany. It is believed the men may have shot themselves after being rounded up by police following a failed bank robbery.

Investigators suspect the arrested individual had been in contact with the trio since the 1990s. It is believed that he had given the alleged terror cell his driving license in 2007 - as well as his passport some four months ago. It is also alleged that the man had rented camping vans for the three, one of which was used in the attack on police that killed a 22-year-old female officer in the German city of Heilbronn in 2007. The murders are believed to be the longest wave of right-wing violence in Germany since World War II.

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German neo-Nazi terrorists had 'hitlist' of 88 political targets
Names of two prominent Bundestag members on list found by police investigating activities of National Socialist Underground
Helen Pidd in Zwickau and Luke Harding
guardian.co.uk,
16 November 2011

Police investigating a German neo-Nazi terrorist group have discovered a hitlist of 88 possible targets, including two prominent members of the Bundestag and representatives of Turkish and Islamic groups. Investigators have been trying to establish whether the list included people the group was actively plotting to kill, or was simply a list of high-profile political opponents. Two of those apparently targeted are senior politicians from Munich: the Green MP Jerzy Montag and the Christian Social Union MP Hans-Peter Uhl. Both said they were deeply shocked by the revelation.

According to Spiegel Online, investigators discovered the list during inquiries into the activities of the so-called National Socialist Underground (NSU), which is suspected in a string of terror attacks in Cologne and Düsseldorf from 2000-2004. The number 88 is significant, corresponding in the alphabet to HH, or Heil Hitler. The neo-Nazi cell had gathered the names and addresses in 2005, German police said. Montag said he was alarmed at the discovery. "This is a terrible feeling for me. The fact that the most significant members of the group have been eliminated doesn't resolve this. If they can come up with something like this, so can others." Montag told Spiegel Online he was convinced there were other neo-Nazi terror cells in Germany capable of doing something similar. Uhl added: "When I heard I was on the list I was deeply upset." German authorities have been widely criticised for their failure to stop the group, which killed 10 people, robbed 14 banks and planted two nail bombs over 13 years.

On Tuesday, the Hessen branch of the domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV, admitted one of its agents had been present in April 2006 when two members of the NSU shot dead a 21-year-old Turk in an internet cafe. It has now emerged the agent, who was transferred to less sensitive work following an investigation, openly held rightwing views and was known in the village where he grew up as "Little Adolf". When police raided his flat following the murder, they found a cache of guns, for which he had a legitimate licence, and extracts from Mein Kampf, according to Der Spiegel. There were unconfirmed reports the man was present at three or more other neo-Nazi murder scenes.

Hajo Funke, an expert in rightwing extremism, told ARD television: "It can't be ruled out that this BfV employee took part in the murder, and that is a scandal." He called the case "a Watergate-scale" crisis for German secret intelligence.

The interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, has called for a national register listing all neo-Nazis. The database should hold "information about potentially violent rightwing extremists and rightwing politically motivated acts of violence", he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. It should be accessible to all 16 regional branches of the domestic intelligence service, as well as the national umbrella organisation, plus police authorities, he said.

Following the discovery of the terror cell's base in the quiet town of Zwickau, near the Czech border, the German government is under pressure to explain how the group managed to murder undetected for so long. The two men and one woman believed to be founder members of the NSU were known to police in their home town of Jena, east Germany, after a bomb-making factory was discovered in the garage rented by the woman, Beate Zschäpe, in 1998. The local branch of the Thuringian secret service allegedly had 24 lever-arch files on the trio and yet only uncovered the cell years after they carried out at least 10 murders – and after the men were found dead, apparently following a joint suicide pact, and Zschäpe turned herself in to police. Zschäpe has remained silent since turning herself in last week, but some local media reports suggested she had told police she was ready to be interviewed about her involvement.

On Tuesday evening, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) voted at its party conference in Leipzig for a ban on the NPD (German Nationalist party), a legal far-right group which has seats in a number of local parliaments in the former East Germany. The opposition Social Democrats have also called for the NPD to be outlawed. Such calls have been criticised by politicians in Merkel's own coalition. Uhl, an expert in interior security, said: "There is no better sign of democracy than for the electorate to vote against the NPD at elections. That's the most noble way."

Uhl said it would be better for Germany's strict data protection laws to be changed to allow detectives to analyse communications. "The whole country is wondering how big the neo-Nazi quagmire is in Germany. Without using internet and telephone data collected from the Zwickau cell that is going to be difficult to establish," he told the Neue Osnabrücke Zeitung.

Earlier this week Merkel described the case as a "disgrace" for Germany.

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Coincidentally, the other day I posted a documentary about 'The Shankill Butchers' - a gang of politically extreme killers who apparently worked with tacit support of the police in Belfast in the 70s. click HERE to watch a doc about them.

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Armed neo-Nazi scene embraces violence
The rise of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) has focused attention on Germany's neo-Nazi scene, which experts say includes violent militants with professional weapons training. Ben Knight reports.
28 Nov 11

The worst ever terrorist attack on German soil was carried out by a neo-Nazi at the 1980 Oktoberfest in Munich. That was when 21-year-old Gundolf Köhler detonated a pipe bomb in toilets near the main entrance to Germany’s biggest festival, killing 13 people, including himself, and injuring over 200 others. In light of this, it seems hard to believe that authorities could have underestimated the threat of far-right terrorism in Germany. But instead of rooting out extremist right-wing networks, intelligence agencies stepped up their efforts against Islamist terrorists over the past decade.

However, for the people whose work brings them close to far-right circles – in many cases helping reformed neo-Nazis to escape the scene, the latest revelations about the terrorist cell known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU) did not come as a shock. “We weren’t surprised at all,” explained Reinhard Koch, director of ARUG, an initiative based in the western city of Wolfsburg that provides counselling for young people exposed to right-wing extremism. “There have long been signs that at some point such groups would form, and not only for us - it should have been clear to the authorities too.” On top of that, “It can’t be ruled that there are other such groups,” Koch told The Local. “Weapons caches were constantly being found in this scene or that scene – it happened so often that people stopped even wondering what these weapons were for.”

Training camps

As far as Koch is concerned, the distance between the ‘ordinary’ neo-Nazi scene and the ‘hardcore’ element prepared to commit murder is very small. “You shouldn’t imagine that there are these nationalist gangs like the Kameradschaften, and then there’s a huge gap and then there’s a terrorist scene,” he said. “It all blends seamlessly together.”

Koch’s work with reformed neo-Nazis has taught him that violence permeates all parts of the extremist right-wing scene. This violence does not just take the form of drunken brawling at weekends, but disciplined training with guns administered by ex-servicemen. “We have people in our programmes who have had weapons training themselves,” said Koch. “They were trained in western Germany, in Lower Saxony, by neo-Nazis who used to be mercenaries, for instance in the former Yugoslavia. Some were part of European training networks and got training in France or Belgium.” The training takes place in remote country areas, sometimes privately owned, and sometimes rented for the purpose, either in an afternoon or over several days. “They often look for isolated wooded areas,” said Koch.

Not kids playing

Dierk Borstel, researcher into right-wing extremism at the University of Bielefeld, was also unsurprised to read the recent revelations about the NSU. “We’ve known that the option of terrorism, the option of militancy, the option of murder has been discussed in the extremist right-wing scene for some time,” he told The Local. “A few years ago there was a group based in the Potsdam area that went underground that called itself the ‘National Resistance’ who specialized in blowing up Jewish cemeteries,” he said. “We have constantly had weapons and explosives finds, but they were never taken seriously. It was simply massively underestimated. The police just thought they were little boys playing cowboys and Indians.”

In the past, far-right nationalism has been concentrated in larger, more publicly visible structures with clear hierarchies. According to Koch, these have been put under so much pressure in the past four or five years, both from the police and from left-wing anti-fascist organizations that they have split into smaller underground networks. These smaller cells are increasingly putting emphasis on direct action rather than political statements. “We know that it’s not about making political statements or having political theories,” said Koch. “What counts is what we call the ‘propaganda of the act.’” That has inevitably led to a growing readiness for violence. “It’s more like, ‘We see ourselves as fighters. We see ourselves as surrounded by enemies, and we are prepared to target our political opponents.’ And apparently it is more and more about being armed,” said Koch.

East German and unemployed?

Two myths consistently cling to the image of the German neo-Nazi – that he is from the former communist East Germany, and that he is unemployed. “That really is nonsense,” said Borstel. “Some westerner just thought to themselves the system that the Stasi (East German secret police) promoted could somehow protect the NSU. I think that’s just stupid and really quite offensive. It is a little different in the east than the west, because of the history,” admitted Borstel. “And also because there is less experience of democracy and immigration, and there have been different economic problems in the east. But I seem to remember that the first right-wing terrorist group began in Munich.” The same is true of other staple stereotypes.

“Young, male, unemployed - the typical neo-Nazi. That’s one of the myths that we have had to work against for a long time,” said Koch. “Generally we can say that many of them had anxieties about finding their place and securing their livelihoods or their status in a fast-changing, globalizing world.” It is this very universal fear that, according to Koch, drives many young people to extremism. “What they want is a place or a group they say they belong to,” said Koch. “Many young people are searching for security and certainty, and the right-wing scene offers them that.”

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Anti-fascists brick up Neo-Nazi politician's front door
20 Dec 11
thelocal.de

Anti-fascists in Lower Saxony bricked up the front door of a top member of the extreme-right National Democratic Party's (NPD) home to protest against his presence at a city council meeting on Monday. The front door was neatly walled in overnight, and sealed with a poster reading, “House arrest for Nazis.” An antifascist spokeswoman said the action was a symbolic attempt to stop him leaving the house.

Police were called to the house in Oldenburg where Ulrich Eigenfeld, treasurer of the NPD, lives, after other people living there opened the front door and found their exit blocked. “The line is crossed for us when they leave the house with their misanthropic thinking,” said a spokeswoman for the group in an email, according to the Oldenburger Lokalteil website. She said that although anti-fascists were against walls in society, naming nationalism, racism, sexism and the class system as examples, this was a different case. “We say – tear down walls! But for Nazis we make an exception,” she said.

Eigenfeld made it to the meeting of the Oldenburg council, but his speech was disrupted by a group of around 50 protesters who shouted while he tried to talk, and held up banners against the NPD, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Tuesday. So many Social Democrat and Green politicians left the meeting in protest at his presence, that it could not be continued, the paper said.

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Excellent. Anything that disrupts the far-right is good to see. A comment on the original page says that this is fascistic behaviour, but that sort of idiotic comment always come from nazi-sympathisers who genuinely think that their mentality is as valid as anyone else's. It's like having criminals saying that they should be allowed to steal because it's their right as criminals.

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Commandos arrest neo-Nazi terror suspect
1 Feb 2012
thelocal.de

A man accused of supplying a neo-Nazi terror group with weapons was arrested in Düsseldorf on Wednesday morning, accused of being an accessory to six of the ten racist murders said to have been carried out by the gang. Special commandos under orders from the Federal State Prosecutor raided the home of the 31-year-old man, named only as Carsten S., after he was formally accused of helping the self-styled Nationalist Socialist Underground (NSU). He is also accused of one count of attempted murder.

The prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday Carsten S. had maintained contact with the three members of the NSU for five years after they went underground in 1998, giving them money as well as helping them to get a gun and ammunition. He is said to have worked with Ralf Wohlleben – another alleged NSU supporter who was arrested in November – to get the items.

“Due to a close personal and ideological connection to the NSU members, the accused accepted that the weapon could have been used for far-right murders,” the office said in a statement, although it remains unclear whether the gun he was involved in procuring was actually used to kill anyone. He is said to have been active in the fascist group Thüringia Heimatschutz in 1999 and 2000, and although he said in a statement last week that he had opted out of the neo-Nazi scene in 2000, the prosecutor said he maintained contact in such circles until 2003.

The killings attributed to the NSU – of eight shopkeepers and staff of Turkish origin and one from Greece, as well as that of a policewoman – were not linked to right-wing extremist violence until last year when two of the NSU members were cornered after a bank robbery. One shot the other and then himself before police could get to them, while shortly afterwards their alleged accomplice, a woman called Beate Zschäpe, is said to have blown up their flat in the Saxon town of Zwickau shortly afterwards. Zschäpe is currently in custody after handing herself in. Carsten S. is the fifth alleged supporter to have been arrested. Detectives linked the trio to the killings only after finding the gun used in all of them in the rubble of the flat – as well as a DVD claiming responsibility.

The multiple errors made by authorities in their pursuit of the gang and numerous embarrassing revelations about informants having been within arm’s reach of them have prompted the establishment of a dedicated centre for intelligence work into the neo-Nazi scene in Germany.