extremism
Threatening letters against mosques: alleged author caught
Exterior shot of the Turkish-Islamic Ditib Mosque in Göttingen. photo
© Swen Pförtner/dpa
For years, Muslim communities received right-wing insults that were always signed with the same family name. Have the investigators now been able to solve the series of crimes?
According to the police, the letters were all signed with the name of a real family from Osnabrück. The authorities in Osnabrück are therefore leading the investigation. The letters were mainly sent to Muslim religious communities, but also occasionally to public or Christian institutions.
In Lower Saxony, a mosque in Hanover received a threatening letter signed “NSU 2.0” at the end of July. It said: “Your snack is just the beginning. We’ll be back.” A few weeks earlier, an arson attack had been carried out on a restaurant near the mosque. Nobody was injured. There was no evidence that the arson attack and the threatening letter were connected.
The threatening letters in Lower Saxony were also sent to addresses in the city of Osnabrück, to the Ditib community in Göttingen and to communities in Bramsche (Osnabrück district) in the Diepholz district.
According to previous police information, an investigation was initially carried out against unknown people for incitement to hatred, insults, threats, slander and for using unconstitutional symbols such as swastikas.