The plan by the Greens and the SPD to prepare a committee of inquiry into the National Socialist Underground (NSU) in a working group has met with rather restrained reactions from the other parliamentary groups. On Wednesday, on the tenth anniversary of the unmasking of the terror cell, Cemal Bozoğlu (Greens) and Florian Ritter (SPD) referred to the “numerous unanswered questions that still surround the NSU complex” and the aim of a U committee provided in promising. A fifth of all MPs would be required to set it up; this would be met by the two parliamentary groups – but they want to compose a list of questions and seek the broadest possible consensus.
The background to this is also the petition “No closing line”, initiated by victims’ representatives. In 2012 and 2013, MPs had already dealt with the NSU, which murdered five people with foreign roots in Bavaria alone.
“Of course, I understand the need of the victims’ relatives to clear up the outstanding questions in order to be able to conclude with these terrible crimes,” said the parliamentary manager of the CSU, Tobias Reiss, on Thursday of the SZ. “But we really have doubts whether a second committee of inquiry after the extensive investigation in 2012 and 2013 could bring new findings to light here.”
Florian Streibl, parliamentary group leader of the coalition partner Free Voters, sees it similarly: “In principle, we do not oppose a committee of inquiry and support any clarification.” However, there was the first U committee and a very intensive criminal trial; it now depends on what a new committee can “determine new things, especially after a long time”.
The AfD is excluded from the invitation
FDP parliamentary group leader Martin Hagen sees the complete clarification of the NSU complex as “an ongoing task”. His parliamentary group was “skeptical as to whether another parliamentary committee of inquiry is the appropriate means – there have already been several of them at federal and state level. But we will not ignore good arguments”. The AfD is excluded from the invitation from the Greens and the SPD. The committee would not reject it across the board.
Uli Henkel, Munich’s Metropolitan Commissioner for the AfD, says: “In general, I would never turn my back on trying to clarify – unless the intention is to instrumentalize the committee, possibly with some allegations against my party.”
The green right-wing extremism expert Bozoğlu refers to findings that only became known after the first committee, there are open questions about the use of informers and about spying on the victims with the conceivable help of neo-Nazi structures in Bavaria. The list of questions should be available this year, stating that the committee must come as quickly as possible – so that there is enough time in the electoral term for its work.