Status: 10/29/2022 4:28 am
Hesse wanted to keep secret a report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, first for 120 years and then for another 30 years. In it, the authority lists what was known about the NSU terrorists. Böhmermann’s ZDF Magazin Royale is now publishing the report.
The platform Ask the State and Jan Böhmermann’s ZDF Magazin Royale have published Hesse NSU files classified as secret. “We believe the public has the right to know what exactly is in those documents that were originally supposed to remain secret for more than a century,” the website said.
In order to protect the sources, the files were completely typed up and a new document created so as not to leave any digital traces, Böhmermann wrote on Twitter.
Originally classified as secret for 120 years
According to the cover sheet, the document is a final report on the examination of files in the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Hesse in 2012. The report is dated November 20, 2014.
There has been a dispute over the so-called NSU files of the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution for years. The authority had checked its own files and documents for references to the NSU. However, the result was initially classified as secret for 120 years, later the time was reduced to 30 years.
Interior Minister defended secrecy
Tens of thousands of people had petitioned for publication. They hoped to gain new insights into the murders by the right-wing extremist terrorist cell NSU and possible connections to the murder of Kassel’s district president Walter Lübcke.
Hesse’s Interior Minister Peter Beuth defended the decision not to publish the files in May 2021. “It is inherent in the work of our security authorities that they cannot disclose their working methods to everyone,” he said in the state parliament at the time.
“Otherwise, the enemies of the constitution could themselves use this information to fight our common values or to endanger people in a targeted manner.” He referred to the parliamentary control body, whose task it is to control the protection of the constitution.
Probably little knowledge in the report
The creators of the ZDF Magazin Royale and Frag den Staat write on their specially created website:
It must be said very clearly: What hardly ever appears in the “NSU files” is the NSU. Anyone hoping to find in these reports the answer to open questions about the NSU, evidence of targeted attempts at a cover-up or even proof of the role of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the series of murders will be disappointed.
Rather, the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution came to the conclusion that no relevant information about the right-wing terrorists could be found in its files. They had already written this in the preliminary report on page two.
Racist murder series
The NSU had been able to murder through Germany for years without being recognized. The victims: nine traders of Turkish and Greek origin and a German policewoman. One of the murders was committed in Kassel in 2006.
The right-wing terrorists also carried out two bomb attacks, injuring dozens of people, and a number of bank robberies. The two terrorists Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt killed themselves in 2011 to avoid arrest. As the only survivor of the NSU trio, Beate Zschäpe was sentenced to life imprisonment as an accomplice.