NSU Committee goes to Beate Zschäpe in Chemnitz – Bavaria

“We’re running out of time,” says Toni Schuberl. For almost a year now, the committee of inquiry into the murders of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist cell in Bavaria, chaired by the Green MP, has been digging through files, questioning witnesses from authorities and from the neo-Nazi scene, for example. In Bavaria alone, the NSU murdered five men of Turkish or Greek origin, in Nuremberg and Munich. The committee should still clarify open questions about the deeds and possible mistakes by the security authorities – but also a supporter environment of the NSU and its conceivable continued existence must be examined. So today’s dangers of democracy and the rule of law.

The committee is now approaching the home straight. In doing so, you “now only gradually get all the files that we need,” says Schuberl. So far there were 5969, currently the number has increased to almost 12000 – with some files comprising hundreds of thousands of pages. “So we’re actually only in the middle of the work now.” At least the question of where the convicted NSU terrorist Beate Zschäpe should be questioned has now been clarified. At the end of May and beginning of June, the MPs will go to Chemnitz Prison for this purpose.

It is already the second NSU investigative committee in Bavaria. The state parliament had already dealt with the security architecture and potential helpers in 2012 and 2013. When the committee presented its final report, however, the trial against Zschäpe at the Munich Higher Regional Court had only just begun.

For more than a decade, the terrorist group was able to murder ten people, carry out attacks and commit robberies undetected across Germany. The NSU was exposed in 2011 with the suicide of Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos and the confession videos sent by Zschäpe. Zschäpe was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018. She was no longer questioned after the verdict became final. That is to take place now.

only where? It has now been decided that it will be Chemnitz. Normally, witnesses are summoned to Parliament by U-committees. The Maximilianeum is an open house with many employees and guests, the security precautions would have been enormous and pilgrims from the neo-Nazi scene would not have been excluded. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) also “advised against it for security reasons,” said the state parliament office when asked by the SZ. All of this would also have been expensive, as would Zschäpe’s transfer to a Bavarian prison, as was sometimes considered. And above all this is the risk that Zschäpe will ultimately say nothing at all.

A lot of effort for a mute witness – that could have brought bad headlines about the handling of tax money in the end. And that with such a sensitive topic, especially for the relatives of the NSU victims. Their many questions were the decisive impetus for the second committee in Bavaria: the “no final stroke” initiative. The committee is expected to travel to Saxony by train, so the costs are manageable. It is still unclear whether and how the public can follow the survey. Another question remains: Is the trip worth it? Unlike before, Zschäpe no longer has the right to refuse to testify. But what does a subcommittee with criminal procedure tools at its disposal want to do when there is silence? Threaten Zschäpe with detention?

Open detailed view

You have to try. The committee must “definitely hear Zschäpe, that’s out of the question,” says Holger Dremel (CSU), deputy chairman, in order to “learn as much relevant information as possible from her.” Cemal Bozoğlu, right-wing extremism expert for the Greens, says: Spying on the crime scenes in Bavaria, selecting the victims, escape routes – Zschäpe is “probably the only person in the world who could really answer these questions comprehensively. If she wanted to.” It is “conceivable that she is not completely silent”. Concerns that this is giving a stage to a right-wing terrorist can be dealt with like this: “We’re not acting as petitioners – it’s an interrogation.” A survey via video is out of the question for the Greens, “we want to sit across from her”. Of course, it would be “naïve” to expect comprehensive information about the entire network, says Bozoğlu. “But it’s about individual aspects, seemingly insignificant details that may come to light.”

In Nuremberg 1999 “the investigation errors began”

The U-Committee has produced some new insights. Example of the “flashlight attack” in Nuremberg in 1999, in which the owner of a restaurant of Turkish origin was injured. The man and his environment were wrongly suspected. The NSU used a flashlight to camouflage the explosive device. The act was only assigned to the group in the 2013 NSU trials. At the end of the 1990s, investigators made no connection to right-wing extremists – despite some indications, such as that a well-known neo-Nazi lived in the neighborhood. Representatives of the police and judiciary confirmed in the committee that they had not assumed such a motivated attack at the time. The U-Committee is the only instance that is investigating this first attack by the NSU core trio on migrants, says Bozoğlu. “This is where the investigation errors started.” What worries him: Could the subsequent series of murders have been prevented if the right trail had been identified in the flashlight case?

New information also came up about the stays of the NSU in Nuremberg and possible helpers – for example that the Thuringians had their own key to a flat share in Nuremberg-Mögeldorf, which was considered a scene meeting place. In the case of the Confessing DVDs that Zschäpe sent to the police, the media and Muslim institutions in 2011, the envelope was apparently dropped directly at a Nuremberg publishing house. An editor testified in the committee that the envelope had no stamp at the time.

Schuberl complains that a “perhaps decisive file from the BKA” has been “so far denied” to the committee. There are “hypotheses as to who else could belong to the environment of the NSU in Bavaria”. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) must “show whether she wants to be an NSU investigator or not,” says Schuberl. “Sometimes I suspect that the authorities are playing for time and speculating with the end of our committee of inquiry.”

The final report must be ready by June. There will probably be – this is almost usual – a report by decision of the committee majority of CSU and FW. And a minority report by the opposition. In general, the public meetings make a harmonious impression, which is by no means standard in sub-committees. Schuberl puts it in a nutshell: “objective, no spectacle”. Even if there was a dispute in the meantime, for example about applications for evidence and a data breach at the State Criminal Police Office. In the findings section of the report, according to Schuberl, “there is probably a lot in common, and I hope also in as many aspects of the assessment as possible”. Vice Dremel says: You “often have a similar view of things”. However, according to his impression, the opposition often interprets circumstantial evidence as evidence when evaluating some statements.

In addition to Zschäpe, the U-Committee is also expecting important witnesses, including a man who was a neo-Nazi and informant for the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the 1990s. Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann and his predecessor Günther Beckstein have also been invited. The two CSU politicians together have been responsible for security policy in Bavaria for three decades. Beckstein has already been invited this week – that should bring more attention to the committee, whose detailed hard work often gets little media attention.