At the start of the hearing of evidence in the committee of inquiry into the series of right-wing extremist attacks in Neukölln, several of those affected criticized the security authorities.
Two of the three witnesses said on Friday that they had not taken ads, waived security talks, did not prioritize investigations and did not understand the crimes as a complex. Trust in the rule of law had been destroyed and mistrust of the security authorities had been fueled, it said.
Claudia von Gélieu and Heinz Ostermann, both victims of the right-wing extremist series of attacks, expressed their criticism most clearly. Von Gélieu, whose car was set on fire in February 2017 and who had already been confronted with right-wing extremist attacks several times beforehand, accused the authorities of “trivializing” the crimes that had been going on for years.
You, like others affected by the series, had begun “to question the usefulness of the exchange with the security authorities,” said von Gélieu. She and Ostermann, whose two cars had been set on fire, put forward the thesis that a warning could have been omitted in advance of the crimes in order not to endanger the surveillance of the main suspects, which was ongoing at the time.
“I have lost confidence in the police,” von Gélieu told the committee, adding, “The negative experiences with the security agencies frighten me as much as the attacks by the Nazis themselves.”
Ostermann, the owner of a bookshop that was also attacked, was similarly critical. “The misconduct has shaken my confidence in the rule of law,” said Ostermann. He accused the authorities of not taking the crimes seriously enough for too long and not protecting him and others affected decisively enough.
Meanwhile, several members of the committee criticized what they saw as the “sluggish” delivery of files by the security authorities and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
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The committee chairman Florian Dörstelmann (SPD) pointed out that the parallel trial against the two main suspects in the series of attacks “certainly will not have any favorable effects on us” and that “we may not receive certain documents immediately”.
At the upcoming meeting of the committee on September 16, Ferat Kocak, member of parliament for the left-wing faction and person affected by the series of attacks, will be heard.
