DThe Hessian NSU files published by the “ZDF Magazin Royale” according to their own statements obviously correspond to the original according to the assessment of the left. “They seem to have been transcribed in full and with the same content,” said the domestic spokesman for the left in the Hessian state parliament, Torsten Felstehausen, on Saturday of the German Press Agency. The texts were placed next to each other and compared. The MPs would have had access to the original files in the state parliament’s investigative committee.
An official confirmation of authenticity was still pending on Saturday afternoon. The Hessian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) announced in a seven-line statement that it was examining the published documents. For the resulting necessary measures, especially “with regard to the personal data contained and the interests of the state concerned”, one is “in exchange with the police and constitutional protection authorities”. A spokesman declined to provide any further details.
The Left Group welcomes the publication. From the point of view of the victims’ families, that was a long request, said Felstehausen. “Finally the public can get their own picture of how the so-called protection of the constitution has dealt with indications of right-wing terror for years.”
It is shameful for the black-green state government in Hesse that it did not follow the petition of more than 130,000 people for the release of files, but that leaks from investigative journalists were needed, he said. The left faction fought for the publication for a long time.
“Above all, the failure of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution is in there – that they had a lot of information and were obviously not able to put together a picture from it.”
Disputes over files for years
There has been a dispute for years about the so-called NSU files of the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution – the result of an examination in which the authority had checked its own files and documents on right-wing extremism for possible references to the NSU. They were initially classified as secret for 120 years, later the time was reduced to 30 years. Tens of thousands of people had petitioned for publication. The initiators of the petition hoped for new insights into the murders of the right-wing extremist terrorist cell “National Socialist Underground” (NSU) and possible connections to the murder of Kassel’s district president Walter Lübcke.
Hesse’s Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) defended the decision not to publish the files in May 2021. “It is inherent in the work of our security authorities that they cannot disclose their working methods to everyone,” he said at the time in the state parliament in Wiesbaden. “Otherwise, the enemies of the constitution could themselves use this information to fight our common values or to endanger people in a targeted manner.” He pointed out that the responsible parliamentary control body for the protection of the constitution has full rights to inspect files and can view all information from the protection of the constitution at any time.
The NSU had been able to murder through Germany for years without being recognized. The victims: nine traders of Turkish and Greek origin and a German policewoman. The right-wing terrorists also carried out two bomb attacks, injuring dozens of people, and a number of bank robberies. One of the murders was committed in Kassel in 2006. The two terrorists Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt killed themselves in 2011 to avoid arrest. As the only survivor of the NSU trio, Beate Zschäpe was sentenced to life imprisonment as an accomplice – even if there was never any proof that she herself was at one of the crime scenes.
