NSU-Komplex

From 1998 to 2011 the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation ‘National Socialist Underground’ (NSU) committed ten murders, three bomb attacks and 15 robberies. The murdered victims are Enver Şimşek, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Süleyman Taşköprü, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar, Theodoros Boulgarides, Mehmet Kubaşık, Halit Yozgat and Michèle Kiesewetter. Except for Kiesewetter they were all small-scale entrepreneurs of Turkish, Kurdish and Greek ancestry living in different smaller and bigger cities in Germany.

Prior to the NSU claiming responsibility in 2011, police, politicians and media all categorically dismissed a racist motive behind the murders. In their fabricated allegations, repeated interrogations and secret investigations prosecutors and police officers focused almost solely on the victims’ families. The crimes were referred to as ‘The Doner Kebab Murders’ or the ‘Bosphorus Murders’, perpetuating racist stereotypes, and serving to situate the crimes semantically as Middle Eastern, and therefore distinctly foreign.

The term ‘NSU Complex’ was put in use to describe this composite of neo-Nazi terror connected with institutional and structural racism. It denounces the practice of victim-perpetrator role reversal in the often markedly racist reporting in Germany’s media, the collaboration between Germany’s secret services and the neo-Nazi underground, the attempted cover-ups, the deliberate disappearance of evidence, the unexplainable deaths of witnesses and the persistent obstruction of attempts to clarify the background and details of the crimes. Eleven parliamentary enquiries, some of which are still underway, have yet to fully explain the specifics of the NSU Complex.

In 2013, court proceedings against known NSU members and accomplices were launched at Munich’s Higher Regional Court. From the very first day of court proceedings the civil plaintiffs of the victims and victim’s families have repeatedly criticized the narrow focus of the charges in relation to the NSU’s support network. Every attempt to demonstrate the state authorities’ entanglement with the NSU and their structurally racist actions is actively torpedoed by the federal prosecutor and ignored by the court. Those targeted and affected by the crimes and those involved in the accessory civil prosecution have been repeatedly denied the right to talk or are interrupted as they speak.

The fact that the crimes perpetrated by the NSU were only possible because of a racism deeply rooted in German society is largely dismissed. And yet, this is exactly what a large number of survivors of the NSU’s murderous and terrorizing attacks have been loudly proclaiming for years. (Text Tribunal Spots)