The 11 members of the parliamentary committee investigating the National Socialist Underground (NSU) group are experienced parliamentarians, not easily shaken. But the errors they have come across in their inquiry often leave them speechless.

Faced with mistakes, failure and carelessness, even surprising ignorance on the part of the intelligence agents, the deputies can't dodge the question of whether Germany's security agencies are up to the job. More to the point: did the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the country's domestic intelligence agency, turn a blind eye to rightwing extremism?

Shocking neglect

The committee was established in January by all the parties in the German Bundestag.  Every time it meets, it uncovers more examples of grotesque carelessness and failure: 10 murders in five federal states, all of them committed with the same weapon - but investigators didn't come up with the obvious conclusion.  Results of the individual investigations were not pooled or compared: everyone was busy doing their own thing.  

Even worse: police did not thoroughly pursue indications that neo-Nazis might be behind the murders of ethnic Turks and Greeks. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which keeps an eye on rightwing extremism, also didn't make the connection to the NSU, despite the controversial practice of recruiting and paying police informers within the extreme right-wing scene. For a while, security officers actually were in touch via informers with the alleged killers Uwe Böhnhardt, Uwe Mundlos and Beate Zschäpe, while they were in hiding in Zwickau in Saxony. The apparent suicide of Böhnhardt and Mundlos in November 2011 finally blew the group's cover.

Lack of trust

The inquiry has come up with two important facts so far: firstly, individual officers made grave mistakes. A police interview with an exorcist who said he could contact one of the murder victims in the after-world is just the tip of the iceberg. Bernhard Falk, a former vice-president at Germany's Federal Criminal Agency (BKA), told the parliamentary inquiry that he considered that the investigations had been conducted in an utterly amateurish manner,.

Structural problems add to the puzzle: coordination among Germany's security agencies doesn't seem to work well. Their approach was "schematic and bureaucratic," says Clemens Binninger, one of the members of the committee.

"Police and security services blocked each other, it's bewildering," says another member, Wolfgang Wieland, adding the various Offices for the Protection of the Constitution in each state could have given essential tips in the search for the perpetrators. But in Bavaria, where police had in fact considered neo-Nazis as possible attackers, the state office remained silent. No-one came to the conclusion that the various investigations should be brought together under central control. One thing is clear: the German intelligence agencies' reputation has suffered; confidence in the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been shaken to the core.

Shredded files

The NSU parliamentary inquiry may be one of the most important committees the Bundestag ever appointed. In painstaking detail, the members are trying to unravel the mess authorities left behind; they piece together details that haven't been visible in the larger context.

They interview witnesses and study file upon file - in so far as they still exist. The fact that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution destroyed important files concerning the NSU case in November 2011, after the terror group had finally been discovered, is definitely a low point in their investigation.

Not just that - it's an "incredible scandal" says parliamentarian Eva Högl. It is now up to the committee to determine whether federal authorities ordered an internal cover-up. The files concerned the use of informers in a far right group to which the members of the NSU belonged.

Consequences

The director of the agency, Heinz Fromm, has now resigned, and another head rolled Tuesday with the dismissal of the head of the agency in the state of Thuringia, who, said the state interior minister, no longer enjoyed the confidence of the state assembly.

The Bundestag's parliamentary inquiry will be busy for months: every answer raises a host of new questions, and several of the government ministers involved still have to be questioned. In 2013, the comittee is expected to give recommendations on urgently needed reforms of Germany's security agencies. 

The federal government in Berlin has meanwhile set up a new hub to fight rightwing extremism. At its center is a databank that collects data on rightwing extremists and makes it available to all agencies involved.

Author: Nina Werkhäuser / db
Editor: Michael Lawton