New evidence points to German secret service collaboration with far-right NSU

By Christoph Dreier

14 November 2013

On Monday, Siegfried Mundlos, the father of alleged right-wing terrorist Uwe Mundlos, testified before the NSU (National Socialist Union) investigation committee of the Thuringian state parliament. He confirmed that the secret service had worked closely with right-wing extremists.

Mundlos detailed the circumstances in which the three suspected NSU members—Uwe Böhnhardt, Beate Zschäpe, and Uwe Mundlos—went to ground in January 1998. In the following years, the three allegedly carried out at least 10 racist murders and robbed 14 banks.

The retired computer science professor from Jena testified that the three right-wing extremists had been supported by the secret service when they went to ground. “It was known that they were in Chemnitz,” he said. “They could have been apprehended in the first weeks. Any other account is nonsense.”

He indicated that he knew that the trio had close contacts in Chemnitz and had also informed the police of this.

Furthermore, Mundlos stated for the record that he had told police investigators that his son had probably fled in Ralf Wohlleben’s car. When the terrorist attacks began, Wohlleben was probably their most important link to the NSU; he procured the first murder weapon for the group. He is currently under indictment by the Munich Higher Regional Court for murder. This line of investigation was apparently never seriously pursued by the police.

Mundlos also explained why. After his son’s disappearance, secret service agents asked him to contact them as soon as he heard anything about Uwe, he said. The officials had asked him to make contact through a public telephone, as police had bugged his own phone. Thereafter, the secret service systematically obstructed the police investigation.

Siegfried Mundlos spent years trying to persuade the authorities to look for his son. In 2005, he lodged a missing persons report with the police in order to force them to take further action.

These statements are of great importance. They suggest that the trio was protected by the secret service from the beginning, and that they received help when they went to ground.

Siegfried Mundlos pointed to the well-known involvement of the secret service in the far-right scene. The extremist Thuringian Homeland Security (THS) “would never, never have thrived if the Thuringian state secret service had not provided them with sizable amounts of taxpayer funds.”

They “operated a job creation scheme,” Mundlos said, referring to informant Tino Brandt, who received at least DM200,000 from the secret service, which he used to build up the THS.

The NSU emerged from the THS. An address list found during a raid on the apartment of Uwe Mundlos in 1998 contained details of at least five secret service informants. This was “not an NSU network, it was a secret service network,” Mundlos told the investigating committee. Shortly after his son’s disappearance, he received an anonymous letter, stating that Zschäpe was also an informant.

Mundlos concluded from the facts that at least Böhnhardt had been recruited as an informant and had gone underground to monitor illegal, right-wing formations. “Rather underground as an informant than in jail” was his calculation, Mundlos guessed.

Much of the media tried to dismiss the elder Mundlos’ statements. Der Spiegel said Mundlos had “set upon a [conspiracy] theory.” The Thüringer Allgemeine even accused him of tinkering “with his quite personal legend out of moral self-defence.”

In reality, Mundlos senior’s considerations are well founded, and are far more probable than the blatant lies, obfuscations and manipulations of the authorities.

His reports are consistent with the statements of Sven Wunderlich, who was an investigator for the Thuringia state criminal police office (LKA) in 1998. According to Wunderlich, the secret service seriously hampered the work of the police. Either the secret service was already in contact with the trio, he concluded, or they wanted to make contact “to clarify certain things without the police and judiciary.”

Currently details that have come to light suggest that the circle of NSU supporters comprised 129 people. Of these, about 20 have been exposed as employees of the security agencies. To cover their own tracks, secret service agents destroyed at least six files about their informants just one week after the NSU imploded. These included a file dealing with Michael See, who was in the pay of the secret service and developed the concept of terrorism on which the NSU was based.

New facts constantly come to light, showing that the NSU was at least hidden by the authorities. In the current NSU trial in Munich, the wife and daughter of the Dortmund victim Mehmet Kubasik gave testimony that they had informed the police after the murder of their father and husband regarding a possible right-wing extremist background to the crime. “You can rule that out,” police responded.

Last week, the NSU trial examined the deaths of Böhnhardt and Mundlos on November 4, 2011 in Eisenach. After a bank robbery, their car was tracked down by two police officers. The officers testified they heard two shots as they moved closer to the vehicle. For this reason, they hid behind a wall and called for support. A few minutes later, the car went up in flames. When fire-fighters arrived, they found two men who had been killed, each with a head-shot from a pump-action shotgun.

Even if, after the fire-fighting operations, any relevant gunshot residue could have been found, according to the official version, Mundlos had first shot Böhnhardt and then himself. This is contradicted by numerous pieces of evidence.

A report by broadcaster N24 pointed out that given the finding of two shell casings at the scene, the gun must have been loaded again after the second shot, which would be extremely difficult in a suicide with a large calibre weapon. There is also credible testimony from neighbours that there were no shots immediately before the fire.

Some neighbours also testified that a third person had been near the car before the fire. The police had found not only the DNA of the two suspected terrorists at the scene but also that of a third man. This DNA had already been secured in connection with burglaries in the years between 2002 and 2005, but the identity of this person is unknown. The DNA could indicate a much larger NSU, or rather secret service network.

All these facts corroborate the statements of Siegfried Mundlos. In every case, the German secret service was informed about the activities of the NSU and protected its members. The many open questions and endless deceptions by the authorities give rise to the suspicion that the NSU was really a secret service operation.

Every new piece of evidence that comes to the surface not only points at the secret service but also their supporters in politics and the media.

In August, the Left Party representative in the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the NSU, Petra Pau, made the absurd assertion that the secret service had “failed.” The statements by Mundlos senior expose Pau’s claim as a lie.