The case has long been legally closed. Right-wing extremist Stephan E. is imprisoned for life for the murder of Walter Lübcke. Now the political processing in the Hessian state parliament is coming to an end.
When the MPs meet for the last time this afternoon in Wiesbaden, they will have gone through almost 2,800 files over the past three years. In 43 sessions, they heard 55 experts and witnesses – in one courtroom even the murderer himself, who was guarded by heavily armed SEK officers.
But the quarrel is over. Not much is left of the Democrats’ unity, which all parties swear by after the fact. “Unfortunately, the parliamentary groups could not agree on a joint report,” was the conclusion of committee chairman Christian Heinz (CDU). The disputes in the committee have recently become increasingly violent.
There are now four competing assessments of the first murder committed by a right-wing extremist in the Federal Republic of a politician: the murder of the Kassel district president Walter Lübcke. In addition to the report of the black-green government coalition, the SPD and FDP jointly submitted a dissenting opinion. The left and the AfD also come to their own assessments. All reports are still under lock and key.
misjudgements at security authorities?
The committee was asked to investigate whether the security authorities made serious mistakes before the murder. Could it have even been prevented? If so, who bears the political responsibility?
The state government and the Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for combating right-wing extremism, have been led by the CDU without interruption for 24 years. With ex-Prime Minister Volker Bouffier, the incumbent Prime Minister Boris Rhein and Peter Beuth, two former and the current CDU interior minister had to answer the committee’s questions.
E. had several previous convictions as a right-wing extremist violent criminal and had been observed by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) since 1999. When he shot the CDU politician Lübcke on the terrace of his house in Wolfhagen-Istha in northern Hesse in June 2019 because he had defended a humane refugee policy, E. was no longer on the radar of the intelligence officers. He was considered “cooled off”.
right-wing extremism not in focus
In the work of the LfV in particular, the committee of inquiry brought undisputed shortcomings to light in the period in question: for a long time, the focus was not on right-wing extremism, but on Islamism. The fact that the right-wing scene switched from the principle of tight organization to a strategy of “leaderless resistance” was not understood until late in the observation.
In addition, there was a lack of staff and qualifications. Alexander Eisvogel, President of the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution from 2006 to 2010, was the clearest witness on the witness stand. “Every baker learns his craft more thoroughly,” he said of the conditions at the time.
It was also Eisvogel who marked the name Es in a status report on the North Hessian neo-Nazi scene in 2009 and added the comment “extremely dangerous”. The note went unnoticed when E.’s file was later blocked for official use for data protection reasons. A former employee of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution described to the deputies how she tried in vain to prevent the right-wing extremist from being shelved as supposedly harmless.
Election campaign perspective?
Opinions among the parliamentary groups differ widely on how serious the shortcomings were and whether they have since been remedied. Behind this are different interests and a date: October 8th is the state election in Hesse. Like the CDU with Rhein, the Greens with Vice Prime Minister Tarek Al-Wazir and the SPD with Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser also have serious ambitions for the post of Prime Minister.
The CDU had warned from the start that they didn’t need the committee of inquiry at all. “Further potential for improvement has been identified in individual areas,” admits her committee chairman, Holger Bellino. But there were no serious mistakes. “The murder of Dr. Walter Lübcke could not be prevented.” Literally, Bouffier and Rhein have also committed themselves to this before the committee.
The Greens are more critical of the work of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution than their coalition partner, but they defend the joint report. The SPD is mainly to blame for the disagreement. Green MP Eva Goldbach suspects that she staged “an undignified spectacle” for tactical reasons. Because there is broad agreement on the matter. SPD faction leader Günter Rudolph denies that. The core of the problem is that the government camp is still shirking the question of political responsibility for “catastrophic misjudgments” by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
dispute about the procedure
The SPD feels snubbed that Black-Green even submitted its own draft for a final report. In the Lübcke case, the opposition was entitled to this right for the first time in accordance with the state’s new investigative committee law. But then the CDU and the Greens rejected the SPD’s finished draft as unsuitable.
The left goes furthest in its criticism. As in the case of the NSU murders, there was “multiple failures of the security authorities”. The protection of the constitution must not be strengthened, but must be dissolved.
In July, the state parliament will debate and vote on the final report and the three competing assessments. This ensures that the schedule is kept to despite all the disputes. The parliamentary investigation into the Lübcke murder should be completed in time for the state elections. The committee of inquiry into the racist murders in Hanau, which is running at the same time and is no less divided, does not even achieve this minimum goal.