German ministry ordered neo-Nazi file 'cleaning'

In this 2011 photo, police search in the debris of a house that was set on fire and partially exploded in Zwickau related to neo-Nazi killings of eight Turks and one Greek.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has admitted to destroying additional files related to investigations on the suspected neo-Nazi murders of eight Turks and one Greek, this time on orders from the Interior Ministry in Berlin.

Although the ministry had denied that the files contained any clues about the far-right trio calling itself the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a new agency report discloses that six files from secret wiretapping operations were destroyed in response to a Nov. 14, 2011, order from the Federal Interior Ministry in Berlin, according to Der Spiegel.

The order came just days after revelations that NSU was responsible for the murders of the nine small businessmen of Turkish and Greek origin.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the spy agency, has been under heavy criticism after it became known that a senior agency official had shredded several files on his own initiative relating to informants in the right-wing scene just days after the NSU cell was discovered.

The BfV has said the two incidents are unrelated and that the deleted files were of no great importance.

Germany’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the BfV, claimed that the destruction of the files was routine and justified the act as being in adherence to rules governing the length of time that surveillance files are allowed to be kept.

A Turkish parliamentary committee has accused several levels of the German state of indirectly aiding the murders of eight Turks in a scathing new report

In this Nov. 16, 2011 file picture a police van stands in front of a burnt-out house in Zwickau, eastern Germany that was destroyed by a supposed member of a far-right terror gang. For years, authorities suspected organized crime. 

The neo-Nazi group responsible for the murders of eight of people of Turkish origin and one of Greek origin were indirectly supported by German police, armed forces and the country’s intelligence agency, according to a report released by the Turkish Parliamentary Human Rights Commission.

The report, titled “The neo-Nazi murders in Germany between 2000 and 2006,” said a German paramilitary force called the Reserve Army trained neo-Nazi groups and members of the extreme far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NDP) to use weapons.

A team from the Turkish Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, consisting of ruling Justice and Development (AKP) deputy Münevver Çiğdem Ökten, Tunca Toskay of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Şafak Pavey of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), and Nazmi Gür of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) prepared the report following their May 9 visit to Germany to examine the legal process in the investigation of the racially motivated killings.

Germany was shocked by the scandal in Dec. 2011 when it was revealed that a previously unknown neo-Nazi group, calling itself the National Socialist Underground, was behind hate murders in various cities between 2000 and 2006. The case has left the impression that the police were blind to the threat of far-right violence and did not investigate the murders properly because they involved immigrants.

The series of murders began in Nuremberg, where Adolf Hitler made an appearance before the Holocaust, the report read. The victims all worked in small shops, stalls and kiosks, with two having worked in döner kebab restaurants, leading the German media to describe the murders as the “Döner Killings.” The report denounced the German media for its role in the underestimation of the racist motives behind the murders, which influenced German public opinion.

The report strongly criticized the German state for not investigating the murders properly, and said the “murderers received professional help.”

“The lack of coordination between the German military, security forces and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution caused the murders to continue. In some cases the intelligence agency did not cooperate with the police, and in some cases military officials ignored intelligence,” the report read.

The commission accused the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution of direct involvement in the murders.

“[The commission has] determined that the office participated in the murders directly or indirectly. Some informants provided guns, fake IDs and passports to the terrorist group, as well as supporting them by renting vans or hotel rooms,” the report read.

The head of German intelligence, Heinz Fromm, was forced to resign on July 2 amid explosive revelations that his agents deliberately destroyed and manipulated files containing information about the case.

The report also criticized the German judiciary for insulting the families of the Turkish victims. “Victims were treated as criminals and their families were treated as suspects,” the report said. According to the report, underage relatives of the victims were forced to take repeated DNA tests and were photographed as if they were suspects.

The report acknowledged the efforts of the German president and federal government to shed light on the murders, but said the compensations paid to the families of the victims were not enough to cover even material damages, and fell far short of covering psychological damage.

German neo-Nazi murders scandal claims another top official

Thousands of people demonstrate against the neo-Nazi festival 'Rock for Germany' organized by the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany, NPD, at Puschkinplatz square in Gera, Germany.

A scandal over a botched probe of 10 murders blamed on German neo-Nazis felled the third top official this month as the head of a state intelligence service stepped down Wednesday.

Reinhard Boos, the head of the secret service bureau in the eastern state of Saxony, resigned in an affair that last week claimed Germany's domestic intelligence chief after his office admitted to shredding key files.

The leader of another state's bureau, Thomas Sippel of Thuringia in central Germany, was dismissed last week.

Saxony's interior minister Markus Ulbig said that the state security services had only recently learned that they had transcripts from wiretapped telephone calls related to the neo-Nazi probe dating from 1998.

"The reason this fact only came to light now is apparently linked to the gross misconduct of individual staff members," Ulbig told the state legislature.

"The president (of the Saxony state intelligence service) deeply regrets this occurrence which is why he has asked me to give him another post from August 1 of this year." Ulbig said he had ordered the transcripts to be reviewed and sent to federal prosecutors to aid their ongoing investigation of the murders, mainly of Turkish-born shopkeepers throughout Germany between 2000 and 2007.

Boos had led the office since 2007 and also between 1999 and 2002.

It emerged in November that a far-right trio calling itself the National Socialist Underground (NSU) was likely behind the murder spree.

The case broke open only when two members of the NSU were found dead in an apparent suicide pact and the other, a woman, turned herself in.

Investigators initially suspected criminal elements from the Turkish community were behind the rash of killings in a probe marked by repeated missteps and allegations of a cover-up.

A parliamentary committee is investigating the affair and the German government has pledged a root-and-branch reform of the security services.

Seeds of hatred sprout in soil of Greek crisis

Gangs are attacking immigrants all over Greece – a fact ignored by authorities, says Human Rights Watch. Some are allegedly linked to the far-right Golden Dawn party. Migrants are blamed for crimes and for eating into shrinking government subsidies.

­Moreover, police often discourage victims from filing complaints and sometimes even threaten them with detention if they insist on an investigation.

“Migrants and asylum seekers spoke to Human Rights Watch of virtual no-go areas in Athens after dark because of fear of attacks by often black-clad groups of Greeks intent on violence,” says Tuesday’s report by the advocacy group, as cited by Reuters. “While tourists are welcome, migrants and asylum seekers face a hostile environment, where they may be subject to detention in inhuman and degrading conditions, and risk destitution and xenophobic violence.”

The report is based on interviews with 59 people who experienced racist attacks between August 2009 and May 2012. In two of these cases, the attacks were directed against pregnant women.

Human Rights Watch says certain facts suggest that perpetrators attacking migrants are associated with local vigilante groups and the far-right Golden Dawn party. It had no evidence, however, that the group directed such attacks.

The party itself, which campaigned on a pledge to clear Greece of all immigrants, denies any connection with violence directed against migrants, as well as denying its ideology is neo-Nazi.

Greece is a major gateway for illegal migrants from Asia and Africa flocking to the European Union for a better life. The issue has become particularly painful as the country goes through its fifth straight year of recession and record-high unemployment is fuelling anti-immigrant sentiment.

Lawmakers of the extreme-right ultra nationalist Golden Dawn party are sworn in during the inaugural session of the Greek parliament in Athens on June 28, 2012. (AFP Photo/Louisa Gouliamaki)

Lawmakers of the extreme-right ultra nationalist Golden Dawn party are sworn in during the inaugural session of the Greek parliament in Athens on June 28, 2012. (AFP Photo/Louisa Gouliamaki)

­Scapegoating as new national ideology

­Meanwhile, violent clashes between supporters of the Golden Dawn party and groups of anarchists shook the western city of Agrinio on Monday night. Police reports say that the fighting caused considerable damage to cars and shops, leaving the city's streets in a mess.

Yanis Varoufakis, an economist and lecturer at Athens University, says that “the serpent’s egg” of hatred begins to hatch whenever people lose hope and those spreading the hatred end up as the only winners.

“It should act as a warning for all of us that whenever a social economy implodes, as opposed to just going to a recession, scapegoating becomes the order of the day,” he told RT.

Greece’s authorities themselves are infiltrated by this kind of mentality, says the economist.

“We have, unfortunately, an extremely cozy relationship between neo-Nazis and police, and we have neo-Nazis in Parliament. And we have the breakdown, effectively, of the consensus that prevails since World War II in Greece, where fascism and Nazism were simply not on,” he explained.

“The only people who win are the ones who spread the [seeds] and narratives of hatred,” Varoufakis concluded.

The ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party, whose flag closely resembles the Nazi swastika, got around 7 per cent of the vote, which launched it from obscurity to win 21 seats in Greece’s Parliament in the May 6 election – the first time it had passed the threshold to enter the legislative body. More than half of the country’s police officers voted for Golden Dawn.

Neo-Nazi aided Palestinian perpetrators of 1972 Munich massacre, report says

German weekly Der Spiegel bases report on 2,000-page file compiled by Berlin authorities, made public nearly 40 years after the attack at the 1972 summer Olympics, which resulted in the death of 11 Israeli athletes.

Neo-Nazi activists aided the Palestinian terrorists who perpetrated the massacre of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics in 1972, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported on Sunday.

The report is based on a 2,000-page file compiled by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which was made public at the request of Der Spiegel, ahead of the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre, to be marked this coming September.

At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, terrorists from Fatah's Black September organization took hostage members of Israel's Olympic squad. Two Israeli athletes were killed in the initial hostage-taking and nine were killed during a botched German rescue attempt at a Munich airport.

A document released on Sunday, detailing a correspondence between local police in Dortmund and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, reveals that seven weeks prior to the attack a man named Saad Walli, described as having "an Arab appearance", held a suspicious meeting with a neo-Nazi activist named Willi Pohl.

Saad Walli was the alias of Abu Daoud, one of Black September's leaders and an organizer of the Munich attack, who died in Damascus two years ago.

The newly revealed correspondence does not indicate that German federal security forces and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution acted in any way to arrest Abu Daoud, despite having preliminary information.

According to Der Spiegel, the neo-Nazi activist aided Abu Daoud in obtaining fake credentials, including passports and other documents. In addition, he is quoted as saying that he "drove Abu Daoud around Germany, where he met Palestinians in various cities."

Currently, Pohl makes a living from writing detective novels, using a different name, and indicates that "without knowing it," he was linked "to the perpetrators of the massacre at the Olympics."

The German activist was also reportedly linked to a follow-up attack planned by Palestinian militants after the Munich massacre. Following instructions by Abu Jihad, then Yasser Arafat's deputy and Fatah's second in command, Pohl was to plan an abduction attack at the Koln cathedral and in the city halls of several major German cities.

However, he was arrested in Munich with grenades and fire arms in his possession in October 1972. Pohl was also found to be holding a threatening letter, meant to be sent to a German judge who had been in charge of the trial of three of the attack's planners.

Morevoer, the police report exposed by Der Spiegel indicates that Pohl aided the terrorists to obtain weapons, possibly including those used in the massacre itself. "They originated from a very rare production line," the report wrote of the seized arms, saying the arms included "Belgian casings and Swedish explosives, made only for Saudi Arabia."

"Identical weapons were used by Palestinian terrorists to kill the hostages at the Olympics," Der Spiegel added.

Pohl was sentenced to a short jail term for "unauthorized possession of firearms," only to be released four days after his sentencing and, eventually, making his way to Beirut.

According to Der Spiegel, German authorities feared a terrorist attack could be initiated to release the neo-Nazi activist, similar to the one that took place less than two months following the massacre, when a Lufthansa plane was abducted, prompting the release of three of the attack's planners from a German jail.