German secret service involved in NSU far-right terrorist attacks
By Dietmar Henning
18 June 2015
18 June 2015
For
some time, it has been known that at least 25 secret service undercover
operatives were active around the far-right National Socialist
Underground (NSU) terrorist group. Now evidence is mounting of direct
involvement of the security services in assassinations attributed to the
NSU.
Long-suppressed
information and investigations suggest a link between two bomb attacks
in Cologne attributed to the NSU with the secret service and Cologne’s
neo-Nazi scene. This is reported by Stefan Aust and Dirk Laabs, authors
of the book “Homeland Security: The State and the NSU murders”, in theWelt am Sonntag. The
article is largely based on the records of the victim’s lawyers in the
NSU trial, which has been taking place before the Munich Higher Regional
Court for over two years.
In
January 2001 in a shop in Cologne’s Probsteigasse, the then 19-year-old
Mashia Malayeri opened a tin in a Christmas hamper, which someone had
left there in December. The tin exploded, severely injuring her. With
the help of her father and sister, police developed a photo-fit image of
the man who had left the hamper in the shop. Both recalled a young man
with long dark blond hair.
In
November 2011, when the NSU collapsed, the group had claimed
responsibility for the Probsteigasse bombing. However, the photo-fit
image bore no resemblance to the two male NSU members, Uwe Böhnhardt or
Uwe Mundlos, who had allegedly carried out all ten NSU murders,
bombings, and numerous bank robberies. In February 2012, the Federal
Criminal Police (BKA) sent the photo-fit image to the Federal Office for
the Protection of the Constitution (BfV, the Secret Service) and asked
for help in identifying the man. The national intelligence service also
sent the image to the state secret service agency in North Rhine
Westphalia.
The
former head of the state secret service in Düsseldorf, 40 kilometres
from Cologne, was Mathilde Koller. She wrote several official statements
that the authors Aust and Laabs have now examined. In one of the first,
she said the photo-fit image showed “similarities” with a well-known
Cologne neo-Nazi, Johann Helfer, called “Helle”.
In
a note a week later, she wrote: “Johann Detlef Helfer has worked since
1989 as an undercover operative for the North Rhine Westphalia secret
service.” According to the note, Helfer was “directed” towards a leading
neo-Nazi in Cologne. According to the two authors, this was Axel Reitz,
dubbed “the Hitler of Cologne,” by the local press, who was 16 years
younger than Helfer.
Reitz
and Helfer together led the neo-Nazi scene in Cologne and were in
contact the NSU’s immediate periphery. For example, in September 2004,
Reitz received a letter from a Swiss Nazi asking about the health of
“comrade Eminger”. André Eminger stands before the court in Munich as a
supporter of the NSU. His twin brother is also active in the right-wing
scene.
The
secret service agent who had driven Helfer to the Probsteigasse shop at
the time of the attack has since died. According to Koller, Helfer
displayed “affinity with weapons and military exercises.” As a young
man, he already had far-right sympathies and was a member of a
paramilitary group; he trained with the Bundeswehr (Army) as a sniper
and was sent into the reservists association by the intelligence
services.
BKA
investigators showed the victim’s father and sister two photos of
Helfer; however, one was blurred and indistinct, the second was an
outdated passport photo. From these, the two witnesses did not recognise
Helfer as the culprit.
A
picture of Helfer found on the Internet, which the victim’s lawyers
showed the two witnesses and is very similar to the 2001 photo-fit
image, was different. One of the lawyers wrote to the Munich Higher
Regional Court: “Both Mr. Djayad Malayeri (the victim’s father) and Mrs
Mahshid Malayeri (her sister) spoke of frightening similarity of the
photograph in the file, said to show Johann Helfer, with their
recollection of the person who left the gift hamper before Christmas
2000.”
The
Attorney General and BKA have so far been inactive. Helfer has
apparently still not been questioned. Four months after writing the note
to the Attorney General, Mathilde Koller retired “for personal
reasons”. She will soon have to publicly testify for the first time
about the case to the state parliament’s Committee of Inquiry into the
NSU in Düsseldorf.
The Welt am Sonntag article
also reports that Helfer had contact with Cologne neo-Nazi Paul Breuer,
who belonged to Reitz’s group. A few days before the article appeared
in Welt am Sonntag, the Saxony Free Press had
reported on new evidence implicating the Hesse state secret service
operative Andreas Temme. At the time of the murder of the 21-year-old
Halit Yozgat on 6 April 2006, Temme was sitting in his Internet cafe in
Kassel.
Temme
must now testify again at the NSU trial before the Munich Higher
Regional Court. He is to be questioned about a plastic bag, with which
another witness saw him enter the Internet cafe on the day of the
attack. Temme, who led the undercover operatives, had previously said he
did not have this plastic bag.
Significantly,
according to investigators, the murders attributed to the NSU were
carried out with a silenced pistol wrapped in a plastic bag. The
perpetrators reportedly tried to collect the cartridge cases this way,
so as not to leave them at the crime scene.
Three
years ago, gun shot residue (GSR) had been found on a grey pair of
leather gloves recovered from Temme’s childhood home in 2006. Police
sent the gloves to the BKA with a request for “urgent processing”. The
BKA took their time with the investigation, because traces of GSR were
nothing extraordinary for a sports shooter, which Temme was, they said.
The result which then followed was dismissed with the same argument.
However,
this analysis pointed to a peculiarity. Besides traces of GSR for other
types of ammunition, the gloves also had traces of ammunition used in
the Ceska pistol used to commit the NSU murders.
New
and old findings paint the following picture: Andreas Temme, who was
known as “Little Adolf” in his native village, controlled an undercover
agent in neo-Nazi circles linked to the NSU. He phoned him on the days
of the murders in Kassel, Nuremberg and Munich. When the young Halit
Yozgat was shot in his Internet cafe, Temme was present. He carried a
plastic bag containing a heavy object. And gunshot residue was found on
his gloves from ammunition used at the NSU killings.
Weeks
before it was publicly known that Yozgat had also been shot with a
Ceska, Temme told this to a colleague. His boss, Gerold-Hasso Hess, had
discussed his statement to police with Temme. Hess’ first sentence in a
recorded telephone conversation with Temme was, “I tell everyone: If
they know that somewhere something like this is happening, please do not
drop by”.
The
then Hesse state interior minister, now state premier Volker Bouffier
(CDU) holds his protective hand over Temme. To date, the Attorney
General has withheld 37 files on Temme from the prosecution in the
Munich NSU trial, claiming they were “irrelevant.”
“It
is is of some relevance whether Temme covered up the crime, or was
possibly involved in it,” the Yozgat family’s lawyer, Alexander Kienzle,
told the Free Press.
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