Ten years after the terrorist cell National Socialist Underground (NSU) was exposed, the Greens and the SPD take the initiative in the state parliament for a possible second committee of inquiry into the series of murders. The parliamentary groups initially want to discuss the clarification of “numerous unanswered questions that still have to do with the NSU complex” and conceivable aspects of a U committee in a joint working group. The SPD still has to make a formal decision, it said in a statement on Wednesday. With the death of the right-wing terrorists Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, the existence of the NSU ended on November 4, 2011. The NSU murdered ten people (five of them in Bavaria alone) and carried out bomb attacks and robberies.
The state parliament had already dealt with possible state failures in a U-Committee in 2012 and 2013. It was around the time the trial against NSU member Beate Zschäpe began. Some of today’s findings became known later. Among other things, a bomb attack on the Nuremberg pub “Sonnenschein” in 1999, in which the Turkish-born innkeeper was injured, was only assigned to the NSU in the course of the main hearing. Further stays by the trio in the nineties in the Free State later became public, possibly there is a connection to undiscovered neo-Nazi structures. There is also still uncertainty about the role of informants. A year ago, on the anniversary of 2020, a petition was started in which victim representatives as well as associations and activists campaigned for a U-Committee. Title: “No final line”.
A questionnaire should be available this year
A fifth of all MPs is enough to set up a committee – the mark would be reached by the Greens and the SPD. For the broadest possible consensus, right-wing extremism experts Cemal Bozoğlu (Greens) and Florian Ritter (SPD) want to seek talks in parliament. “We not only owe it to the public, but also to the surviving dependents of the victims, to clarify the open questions about the NSU complex,” said Ritter. Bozoğlu explained: “Ten years ago the federal government promised the relatives of the NSU victims to fully investigate the NSU murders. We are still a long way from keeping this promise.” So it is still not known why Bavaria was the main offense of the NSU, how victims were spied on and why the investigations were “one-sided” in the direction of organized crime. With the said attack on the Nuremberg pub “the investigation errors started”. The SPD and the Greens want to write a catalog of questions this year.
The governing groups CSU and Free Voters had reacted rather cautiously to demands for the 2020 committee. It was questionable which new findings the committee should actually bring to light, it said. However, nothing stands in the way of examining the suggestion in specialist committees. Bozoğlu wants to present the finished catalog there, “proactively address” the state parliament anyway and invite them to take part in a joint initiative.