Over 500 neo-Nazis still at large in Germany

By Ayhan Simsek

BERLIN

More than 500 wanted neo-Nazis are still at large in Germany, despite arrest warrants issued for them, the Interior Ministry has confirmed.

Currently 501 far-right extremists are wanted on outstanding warrants, and 114 of them have been accused of committing violent crimes, the Ministry said in its reply to a parliamentary question from the opposition Left Party.

Over 100 other neo-Nazis were wanted for committing politically motivated crimes.

The statistics revealed that more than 160 far-right extremists were at larger since 2016 or earlier.

Germany’s opposition parties have long criticized the police and intelligence services for not taking serious measures against right-wing extremists.

NSU scandal

German police and intelligence services have been under criticism since the National Socialist Underground (NSU) scandal in 2011, which showed that the security services underestimated the threat of far-right violence.

The neo-Nazi group killed at least eight Turkish citizens, a Greek immigrant and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, all apparently without arousing the suspicions of the police or the intelligence services.

It was formed by three right-wing extremists -- Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Bohnhardt and Beate Zschaepe — who were on the run and lived underground with fake identities starting in 1998.

The German public first learned about the existence of the NSU in November 2011, when two members of the group reportedly died in a murder-suicide following an unsuccessful bank robbery.

Until 2011, Germany’s police and intelligence services excluded any racial motive for the murders and instead treated immigrant families as suspects in the case and harassed them for alleged connections with mafia groups and drug traffickers.