The Hessian state parliament has completed its investigation into the murder of the CDU politician Lübcke. After weeks of argument, the debate was moderate. But there was no consensus on the ratings.
Four years after the murder of CDU politician Walter Lübcke, the state parliament in Wiesbaden on Wednesday Final report of the parliamentary inquiry committee debated. The fact that there was no joint report led to mutual ones Blaming between the government camp and the opposition.
Contrary to that sometimes heated arguments the past few weeks, this time the tone of the argument has been remarkably moderate. The appeal by Green MP Eva Goldbach that all Democrats should send a “signal of unity” had no chance of success.
After three years of work by the committee, the black-green coalition pushed through the report with its majority. The paper acknowledges mistakes made by the security authorities, especially in the way the Office for the Protection of the Constitution dealt with the right-wing extremist who was later convicted Killer Stephan Ernst.
Four different ratings
The report leaves open the question of whether the murder could have been prevented if the intelligence and police had done better. There is a lack of facts for this, and it was not the task of the committee to answer the question.
In the debate Despite many similarities in the analysis and in the suggestions for improvement, there were differences: in the weighting of the deficiencies identified as well as in the question of whether Lübcke could still be alive if these deficiencies had not existed. SPD and FDP have jointly presented their own conclusion. Such a dissenting vote is also given by the Left Party and AfD.
CDU sees no structural flaws
“So we come to the conclusion that the cruel act that shook us all to the core could not be prevented by the security authorities,” said Holger Bellino, chairman of the CDU in the committee.
There were “individual omissions”, but no structural defects. Rather, it has been shown that the CDU, which has been responsible for the interior department since 1999, has achieved “massive improvements” in the equipment of the authorities. The SPD and FDP would not have wanted an exchange on the final report, despite the fact that there was a great deal of agreement on the recommendations for action.
Greens see bugs and improvements
The Green MP Goldbach, on the other hand, quoted from the report that the question of a possible prevention of the crime could not be answered “fact-based”. She emphasized that it was a mistake by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution not to keep an eye on the later murderer despite his severe criminal record and to delete his files for use: “Looking back, Stephan Ernst’s dangerousness is beyond question.”
According to Goldbach, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the police would have to expand the exchange of information and monitor apparently inconspicuous right-wing extremists more intensively in the future. In terms of personnel, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is already better positioned, and further improvements are planned.
The CDU politician Lübcke was shot in 2019 by the right-wing extremist Stephan Ernst. In 2020, the committee of inquiry was set up to investigate the role of the security authorities in the murder case. The convicted murderer Ernst was on record as a right-wing extremist, but was no longer under the special surveillance of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution at the time of the crime.
SPDReporter: “I was so naive”
SPD parliamentary group leader Günter Rudolph criticized the fact that black and green did not name those politically responsible for errors that had come to light. The responsibility lies with the former CDU interior ministers: ex-prime minister Volker Bouffier, the incumbent head of government Boris Rhein and the current minister Peter Beuth.
SPD MP Gerald Kummer accused the CDU and Greens of having been “secretly” preparing their own report for months. “I was so naïve as to think there should be a collaboration.” Background: With Kummer, for the first time, an opposition politician was to submit a draft for the final report to the committee. However, the coalition criticized the draft as insufficient and came up with its own version.
There was no single culprit and no bad will among the authorities, but an addition of “many small negligence and inattentiveness,” was Kummer’s content-related conclusion.
A report for the ministry?
The FDP MP Matthias Büger accused the black-green coalition of a “report in the sense of the Ministry of the Interior”. There is no chain of evidence that the murder could have been prevented. But structural deficiencies in the protection of the constitution would have made the act easier.
There is a political responsibility for these abuses. According to Büger, it is therefore regrettable that the interior ministers responsible for the period in question “did not find the strength to apologize publicly”.
Left: Murder could be prevented
That the murder could have been prevented – only the Left faction clearly stated that. According to its committee chairman, Torsten Felstehausen, politicians in Hesse have not noticed a right-wing trend in society.
Movements such as the North Hessian KAGIDA or the AfD were played down as bourgeois. “The domestic secret service has once again failed in the fight against the law,” added Felstehausen. The authority cannot be reformed and must be dissolved.
AfD warns left-wing extremism
In the opinion of AfD chairman Klaus Herrmann, the Lübcke committee showed “partisan calculations and a discrediting of the AfD”. The others would not have placed any value on constructive cooperation from his group.
Hermann also identified weaknesses in the security authorities. But he and the AfD come to the conclusion that the Murder of Luebcke nevertheless “very likely” could not be prevented.