COLOGNE/ISTANBUL

A police note revealed Monday at a German court suggested a far-right motive in an arson attack in Solingen last year that killed four members of a Turkish Bulgarian family.

"Today, on the 14th day of trial, the presiding judge of the Criminal Division at the Wuppertal Regional Court stated that a note from the police had surfaced indicating that the arson attack of March 25, 2024 had already been classified in April 2024 as a right-wing motivated crime," said attorneys of the victims through a press release shared with Anadolu.

They said the note was recently added to the case file and the initial classification and assessment in it had been subsequently altered by hand by an officer.

"For us, it is a scandal how this case has been handled so far by the investigative authorities and how crucial information and parts of the case file have been withheld from the court and our clients," the attorneys said.

They added that a "time-consuming" data analysis is now underway only after the joint plaintiff’s attorney discovered "racist images with Nazi propaganda in the previously unexamined data."

On March 25 last year, four members of a Turkish-Bulgarian family were killed in a fire at night and over a dozen others were injured, some seriously. Nearly all of the four-story house's residents were immigrants, with Turkish nationals among those injured.