Former Prime Minister Günther Beckstein (CSU) sees the failure of the authorities to investigate the NSU murders as “the greatest defeat of the rule of law that I had to experience during my time as Minister of the Interior”. The 79-year-old said on Thursday in the state parliament’s investigative committee, which examines the murders of the National Socialist underground in the Free State. Before he became prime minister, Beckstein was responsible for security policy as interior minister for 14 years, from 1993 to 2007. That was the time when the NSU murdered five men of Turkish or Greek origin in Bavaria alone, in Nuremberg and Munich. And in which the authorities, by no means only in Bavaria, assumed milieu murders. The special commissions bore titles such as “Crescent” and “Bosporus”.
Beckstein reported to the deputies about the great effort made by the police at the time, “investigations were carried out in all directions, but no traces were found”. At his instigation, around 300,000 euros, a higher reward than ever before in Bavaria, were offered. It was also the first case in which Turkish investigators were called in. To this day, however, he recognizes “not the one mistake that, if it hadn’t happened, would have ensured the success of the investigation.”
With the death of the right-wing terrorists Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos and the dispatch of confession DVDs by Beate Zschäpe in 2011, the murderous activities of the terrorist cell became public; the NSU had thus exposed itself. For more than a decade, she was able to murder ten people undetected throughout Germany, carry out attacks and robberies. After the first NSU sub-committee in the state parliament in 2012/2013, new insights emerged. For example, the first attack in 1999 in a Nuremberg pub, the “flashlight attack”. The Turkish-born innkeeper was injured. The pipe bomb was hidden in a flashlight. The crime was only assigned to the NSU late in the trial against Zschäpe and other neo-Nazis. A successful investigation at that time could possibly have prevented the later murders. In addition, the sub-committee is examining the conceivable larger helper network of the NSU in Bavaria and possible mistakes by the police, judiciary and the protection of the constitution.
Beckstein had already testified in the first U-committee in 2012. As a local, he knows the crime scenes in Nuremberg, he said on Thursday, and they are not “where you can easily get to” if you drive through the city as a foreigner. This speaks – his “firm assumption” – for other, previously unknown accomplices. “Hopefully Zschäpe will break her silence.” At the end of May and beginning of June, the committee wants to go to the JVA Chemnitz to question the right-wing terrorist who has been sentenced to life imprisonment. However, it is completely unclear whether she will actually speak or even describe explosive details.
The unsolved series of murders had “uncannyly annoyed” him
“Perhaps the flashlight attack should have been assessed completely differently,” said Beckstein, adding that “from today’s perspective, that was far too low.” The public prosecutor’s office in Nuremberg initially assumed negligent bodily harm. He himself was informed of the assassination by telephone on the evening of the crime – this was recently reconstructed via his former ministry. The fact that he was called as interior minister because of major crimes was nothing unusual. However, no trace of the group later known as the NSU could be found, Beckstein clarified. Ultimately, according to his assessment, an attempt was made to “determine every nook and cranny”. The unsolved series of murders “extremely annoyed” him, given Bavaria’s other record in fighting crime.
Beckstein contradicted a reproach by committee chief Toni Schuberl (Greens) that the investigators might not have investigated German victims “as if with blinders” in the area surrounding the victims. And with the first murder by the NSU, he asked in a note whether a right-wing extremist motive was conceivable. All traces of the neo-Nazi scene have been followed. In addition, as Minister of the Interior, he twice operated a nationwide NPD ban and failed twice. “I always had the dangers on my radar.” During the NSU investigations, all Republican members in the Nuremberg area were even asked for their alibis.
The panel is already approaching the home stretch of the investigation. In addition to Zschäpe, important witnesses are expected to include Bavaria’s head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Burkhard Körner, and Joachim Herrmann, Beckstein’s successor as Minister of the Interior.