Germany's Interior Minister warned on Sunday of a "new form of far-right terrorism" as details emerged of a grotesque film left by members of a neo-Nazi cell in eastern Germany, in which they claimed the murder of nine immigrants between 2000 and 2006.
Prosecutors said police had arrested a suspected accomplice of the group, which referred to itself in the film as the "Nationalist Socialist Underground", and which is also thought to be behind the murder of a policewoman in 2007 and a bomb attack on a Turkish area of Cologne in 2004.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the murders were shameful for Germany.
"We must assume that this is right-wing extremism in the worst form, and it is shaming that such a thing can happen in our country," she told German television.
The revelations, which have caused shock and outrage across Germany, began after police found the bodies of two men, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, both with far-right links, in a mobile home in Eisenach last week. Police believe they killed themselves after a botched bank robbery.
Shortly after the discovery investigators searched a burned-out house in Zwickau, used by the men and one woman, "Beate Z", who later handed herself in to police. There they found guns used in the murder of the policewoman and of the nine vendors, eight of whom were of Turkish background and the other a Greek.
All had run small businesses or fast-food stands, in cities across Germany, leading to the killings being dubbed the "doner murders".
Police also found a 15-minute film recorded on DVDs ready to be sent to Islamic cultural organisations and the media.
The German magazine Spiegel printed stills from the film showing the murder victims' bodies and grotesque montages made by the group showing the cartoon figure of the Pink Panther to point out the scenes of the killings.
"Germany Tour — Nine Turks shot" said a placard in one cartoon scene.
Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said all unsolved crimes with a suspected far-right connection dating back to 1998 would be re-examined for connections to the group, originating in Jena, in the eastern state of Thuringia.
"It looks as if we are dealing here with a new form of far-right terrorism," Friedrich said.
Protesters, many with Turkish roots, gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Sunday to protest against neo-Nazis. Opposition politicians expressed anger that the cell went undetected for so long.
"Beate Z" faces charges of murder, attempted murder, arson and belonging to a terrorist organisation.
What Are Cookies
As is common practice with almost all professional websites, our site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your device, to improve your experience.
This document describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the sites functionality.
How We Use Cookies
We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to the site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not, in case they are used to provide a service that you use.
The types of cookies used on this website can be classified into one of three categories:
- Strictly Necessary Cookies. These are essential in order to enable you to use certain features of the website, such as submitting forms on the website.
- Functionality Cookies.These are used to allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your language) and provide enhanced features to improve your web experience.
- Analytical / Navigation Cookies. These cookies enable the site to function correctly and are used to gather information about how visitors use the site. This information is used to compile reports and help us to improve the site. Cookies gather information in anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors came from and the pages they viewed.
Disabling Cookies
You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser’s “Help” option on how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies may affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.
Third Party Cookies
In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. Our site uses [Google Analytics] which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so that we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is Google’s analytics tool that helps our website to understand how visitors engage with their properties. It may use a set of cookies to collect information and report website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the ‘__ga’ cookie.
In addition to reporting website usage statistics, Google Analytics can also be used, together with some of the advertising cookies, to help show more relevant ads on Google properties (like Google Search) and across the web and to measure interactions with the ads Google shows.
Learn more about Analytics cookies and privacy information.
Use of IP Addresses. An IP address is a numeric code that identifies your device on the Internet. We might use your IP address and browser type to help analyze usage patterns and diagnose problems on this website and to improve the service we offer to you. But without additional information your IP address does not identify you as an individual.
Your Choice. When you accessed this website, our cookies were sent to your web browser and stored on your device. By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies.
More Information
Hopefully the above information has clarified things for you. As it was previously mentioned, if you are not sure whether you want to allow the cookies or not, it is usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it interacts with one of the features you use on our site. However, if you are still looking for more information, then feel free to contact us via email at [email protected]