The platform “Ask the State” and Jan Böhmermann’s “ZDF Magazin Royale” have published Hesse NSU files classified as secret. “We believe the public has the right to know what exactly is in those documents that were originally supposed to remain secret for more than a century,” the website said.
In order to protect the sources, the files were completely typed up and a new document created so as not to leave any digital traces, Böhmermann wrote on Twitter.
According to the cover sheet, the document that can be accessed online is a final report on the review of files in the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Hesse in 2012. The report is dated November 20, 2014.
Years of dispute over publication
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 connections 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 competent 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.
Nine victims of NSU right-wing terror
For years, the NSU had been able to murder undetected through Germany. 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.
