Merkel 'failed to shed light' on neo-Nazi murders

BERLIN

Chancellor Angela Merkel has failed to honor her promise to shed light on the murders of eight Turkish immigrants by the neo-Nazi terror cell, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), according to a prominent lawyer Friday.

"Merkel has broken her promise to do everything to resolve the NSU murders. That has been a big disappointment for the families of the victims," Seda Basay Yildiz told Anadolu Agency on the fifth anniversary of the first revelation of the far-right terror cell.

NSU killed 10 people, including eight Turkish and one Greek immigrant as well as a police officer, between 2000 and 2007 without seeming to arouse suspicion.

The group was only revealed on November 4, 2011, when two members died after an unsuccessful bank robbery and police found guns and propaganda in their apartment.

Yildiz, a lawyer for the relatives of Enver Simsek, the first victim of the NSU terror cell, slammed the failure of German government to fully investigate the far-right murders, and uncover a possible wider terrorist network with possible links to informants of the state.

She said that while Merkel had promised four years ago to the families of the victims to do everything to resolve the murders, efforts to shed light on the NSU had still been blocked by the security agencies, which also shredded various sensitive files related to the terrorist group.

Yildiz also criticized the reluctance of Chief Federal Prosecutor’s office to share detailed information with the lawyers, since the trial of the NSU suspects started in May 2013.

"It seems that as soon as this trial ends, they will say that the NSU murders have been resolved, and they will try to close this file.

"However, we believe that all these murders cannot be the work of only three people. Yet, we have not been successful so far to uncover the wider network of these terrorists, and their possible ties within the state," she said.

According to the indictment of the Chief Federal Prosecutor’s office, 41-year-old female suspect Beate Zschaepe is the only surviving member of the NSU, which composed of three far-right extremists.

Breaking her three years of silence in the high-profile trial in September, Zschaepe denied any role in the killings and claimed that she no longer had far-right sympathies.

Recent revelations have shown that German domestic intelligence agency BfV and its local branches had dozens of informants who had contacts with the NSU suspects in the past.

However, officials insisted that they had no prior information about the existence of the NSU terror cell and its role behind the killings.

Until 2011, Germany's police and intelligence services dismissed any racial motive for the murders and instead treated immigrant families as suspects with alleged connections to mafia groups and drug traffickers.