The 29-year-old right-wing extremist who attacked the Halle synagogue two years ago writes many letters in prison. Not only had he established contact with a policewoman, Lara G., like her, unnoticed, for months Southgerman newspaper and the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung recently uncovered. In addition, he is apparently in contact with well-known right-wing extremists. According to research by the SZ, the assassin from Halle, Stephan B., who had shown no remorse in court, exchanged letters with a big name in the scene from Brandenburg and with a well-known right-wing extremist from Saxony-Anhalt.
Only a letter that Stephan B. wrote to the right-wing extremist murderer of the CDU politician Walter Lübcke in Kassel, Stephan E., was intercepted and stopped by the prison. The Naumburg Public Prosecutor’s Office has initiated investigations into this letter. It is about the suspicion of the preparation of a serious act of violence endangering the state. Because the Halle assassin is said to have informed about instructions for making weapons in his letter. In his attack on October 9, 2019, he had used weapons he had made himself. However, it is unclear whether the murderer Walter Lübckes knew that he should receive such a letter.
Police commissioner as a pen pal
It’s about letters full of ideological encouragement and mutual sympathy. The correctional facility in Burg near Magdeburg reads all of these letters, as the state government of Saxony-Anhalt has now confirmed in response to a request from left-wing MP Eva von Angern. “It is in the nature of things” that the right-wing extremist Stephan B. could try to motivate imitators, they say. Nevertheless, the officers had not noticed for a long time that the young police commissioner Lara G., who worked in the Dessau-Roßlau police station, was hiding behind a pen friend of Stephan B.
In more than ten letters that the policewoman wrote over the course of several months, she is said to have expressed her understanding for the crime – without the institution intervening. The state government now writes that the “type and scope” of Stephan B.’s post were “regularly discussed”. There were “abnormalities”. But the policewoman’s letters came under a cover name and from a cover address. And the officers did not examine this personal data. They also did not prevent the exchange of extremist content as such, as the case of the right-wing extremist pen pal of Stephan B. from Brandenburg and the right-wing extremist pen friend from Saxony-Anhalt show.
The penal system in Saxony-Anhalt has already faced criticism in the past because the Halle assassin Stephan B. managed to attempt to escape a few months after his act and climb over a three-meter-high wall unnoticed. For security reasons, he is looked after only by male judicial officers in prison, it is said. A distancing from his crime has not yet been established. On October 9, 2019, Stephan B. tried to break into the synagogue in Halle and finally shot a passerby and a visitor to a kebab shop.