Germany marks 25 years since series of neo-Nazi murders
German politician Armin Schuster on Tuesday commemorated those killed by the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi terror group that carried out racially motivated attacks between 2000 and 2007.
The NSU is held responsible for the killings of nine people with ethnic minority backgrounds – considered the biggest series of far-right murders in Germany’s post-war history – as well as the killing of a policewoman, two bombings and a spate of robberies.
Their connection to these crimes long remained unknown to Germany’s police. It was only when two of the NSU members were found shot dead in 2011 that their terror spree came to light. A third member, Beate Zschäpe, was convicted of murder in 2018.
Schuster, who serves as interior minister in the eastern state of Saxony, where the suspected ringleaders of the group were based, said much progress had been made in the fight against far-right extremism since the atrocities committed by the NSU.
“No stone has been left unturned,” he told national radio station Deutschlandfunk.
He said extensive reforms within the security authorities had been implemented since.
While conceding that “something like this could happen again,” Schuster said that “the probability is dramatically lower than it was back then.”
Schuster rejected demands by the victims’ relatives for the full release of the NSU files, however, arguing that this would compromise the practices used by state security and intelligence.
