Florists in Zwickau Germany

A brief history of German neo-Nazi group NSU

After robbing a bank in the central city of Eisenach, Mundlos and Boehnhardt are found dead in a camper van in an apparent murder-suicide. Zschaepe sets fire to their hideout in the nearby town of Zwickau and mails videos featuring a Pink Panther cartoon character to the media in which the NSU claims responsibility for the killings. July 2012 The head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, Heinz Fromm, resigns following a public outcry over his agency's shredding of documents related to the NSU case. May 2013 The trial of Beate Zschaepe and four men accused of providing support to the NSU begins in Munich. December 2015 Zschaepe's lawyers read a statement on her behalf, in which she acknowledges knowing of the bank robberies and to setting fire to the hideout in Zwickau. She says she only ever learned of the killings and bombings after they had happened. July 2018 The trial, involving 73 lawyers and hundreds of witnesses, concludes after almost 440 days of hearings. Zschaepe is sentenced to life in prison. The group's four supporters receive lesser prison sentences of between 2½ and 10 years. http://www.tampabay.com/a-brief-history-of-german-neo-nazi-group-nsu-ap_world3d1631f7210641a8829f88373565d674

On the Trail of Germanys Right-Wing TerroristsAre Cops Complicit? - Daily Beast

National Democratic Party got elected to the state parliament in 2004. In 2011, a Neo-Nazi terror cell guilty of nine anti-immigrant murders was discovered in Zwickau, a city close to Dresden. The three-person crew, who called themselves the National Socialist Underground, had been hiding, robbing and shooting people there for over a decade. Nor was Saxony immune to xenophonic violence last year when hundreds of thousands refugees came to Germany. There were 64 attacks against refugee accommodations in the region (the highest number for any German state) and 201 right wing extremist offenses (the second highest, behind much more populous North Rhine-Westphalia). Freital in particular stood out as one of the places that greeted asylum-seekers with raised middle fingers, shattered glass windows, and explosives, rather than with candy and flowers (as in some other German cities). Bottles, eggs and fireworks flew through the air in June last year when hundreds of people showed up repeatedly to protest in front of an old hotel intended to serve as a temporary asylum home. Then at a counter-protest in July, one reporter captured a pensioner sitting in a fold-out chair outside his local bar, giving a Hitler salute. The man later apologized, claiming he was “totally wasted.” Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason It was after a demonstration that summer that an elderly care worker, two bus drivers, a railway trainee, a warehouse worker and one guy who was unemployed but once belonged to the hooligan group “Fist of the East,” got together in Freital’s gloomy Kellerbar and decided to start their own circle of alleged terrorists. Their attacks would soon escalate in brutality. When the group blew out the windows of a kitchen at an asylum home in November last year, deaths or severe injuries were only avoided because four young Syrians were able to get out of the kitchen and into the hallway in time. A few days before the attack an anonymous witness provided the police with screenshots from the group’s chats on the Korean messenger app KakaoTalk. The group had chatted about the Cobra-12-explosives they were buying from Chechnya (for which they used the code name “Fruit”), and mused about possible attacks (or, “Remmidemmi” as bus driver Phillipp W. playfully cal...http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/13/on-the-trail-of-germany-s-right-wing-terrorists-are-cops-complicit.html

Searching for Justice - Jacobin magazine

November 4, 2011. Inside, the charred remains of two bodies were found, both of which had clearly suffered violent deaths before the fire. Hours later, two hundred kilometers away in Zwickau, Saxony, another apartment exploded and burned to the ground. Over the following days, Germany would be rocked by a series of scandals and revelations. Four days later, a woman named Beate Zschäpe turned herself in for the apartment explosion. Police announced that the corpses inside — Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt — were her onetime comrades in a neo-Nazi terrorist cell named the National Socialist Underground. The NSU was responsible for nine racially motivated murders, the killing of one police officer, and the severe injury of another between 1998 and 2011. The group also committed at least three bombing attacks, including detonating a nail bomb on a busy street in Cologne on June 9, 2004, and robbed at least fifteen banks and businesses. Before turning herself in, Zschäpe distributed a series of bizarre and disturbing a href="https://www.yout...

Green party politician remains most popular head of federal state in Germany: poll - Xinhua | English.news.cn - Xinhua

With an approval rate of 66 percent, Daniel Guenther, Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein, was the second most popular head of a federal state in Germany, followed by Stephan Weil of Lower Saxony who was ranked third with 60 percent. At the bottom of the ranking was Berlin's governing mayor, Michael Mueller (SPD), whose work was only rated positively by 27 percent of people living in the German capital's federal state. Following a big win in the European Parliament elections in May, where the Green party in Germany won 20.5 percent of votes and became second strongest political force, support for the Green party in Germany is at a historic high. According to last week's Trendbarometer, the Greens would gain the same number of votes as the governing conservative union CDU/CSU if elections were to be held. With regards to a first Green German chancellor, Winfried Kretschmann recently told the Funke Media Group that a German government led by the Greens would not involve a radical change of policy. "Nobody needs to be afraid of a Green Chancellor. We are not trumps or Erdogans or Orbans who throw everything overboard," Kretschmann told the German newspapers. The head of Baden-Wuerttemberg noted that he did not see "big differences" in alliances with the CDU/CSU and the SPD. "In socio-political issues, we make progress with the social democrats, in economic policy with the CDU/CSU". http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-07/16/c_138229413.htm

German Man Arrested After Failed Attack on Synagogue - The Wall Street Journal

Halle’s university hospital. A senior security official identified the suspect as Stephan Balliet, 27, a German citizen from the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where Halle is located, and said he wasn’t previously known to authorities. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said prosecutors had enough information to assume a far-right motivation behind the attack, even though it was too early to make a final determination. The 35-minute video of the assault was streamed live on Twitch, a streaming platform owned by Amazon.com Inc., according to Storyful, a social-media intelligence company owned by News Corp, which also owns The Wall Street Journal. Christiane Prinz, 49, who owns a hairdressing salon opposite the synagogue, said she saw the suspect, dressed in a dark-green military outfit, launch a projectile over the synagogue’s gate into its front yard and cemetery, after which there was a loud bang. .webui-slideshow-inset a:link, .webui-slideshow-inset .webui-slideshow-inset a:visited { color: initial; } div...https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-killed-in-shooting-in-eastern-germany-11570621267

German conservative politician resigns over far-right ties - DW (English)

Now, the local lawmaker has left Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Robert Möritz, a local politician from the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, surprisingly announced his resignation from Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Friday, saying he wanted "to shield the party from further harm" and calm the political uproar. It recently emerged that Möritz had ties to Germany's right-wing extremist milieu, and has a symbol tattooed on his arm associated with neo-Nazism. Möritz said his resignation was about sending a signal, and that "sometimes, life is about focusing on one's true priorities." He added that he nevertheless fully subscribes to the conservative CDU's values. News of Möritz' links to Germany's far-right milieu had brought Saxony-Anhalt's government — a coalition between the CDU, center-left Social Democrats and environmentalist Greens — to the verge of collapse. On Thursday, the state's CDU issued an ultimatum to Möritz, demanding that he distance himself from the far-right or face repercussions. Read more: Right-wing extremists in Germany to face amped up intelligence The CDU governs Saxony-Anahlt in a coalition with the So...https://www.dw.com/en/german-conservative-politician-resigns-over-far-right-ties/a-51756713

Chemnitz: Syrian asylum-seeker convicted of killing that sparked far-right riots - DW (English)

Daniel H.'s death, took another 8% and now has five of the 60 seats in the city council. Karsten Hilse, an AfD Bundestag member for Saxony, says last year's demos have been misrepresented. "Of course there were some far-right extremists there," he said. "But a young man was murdered, and then citizens got together who weren't far-right extremists, but just normal people like you and me, who said, 'right, this is enough now'." "What annoyed a lot of Chemnitzers is that hardly anyone talked about the murder afterwards, but only about the people who demonstrated," he argued. "But if you're a normal citizen, you go to work, you pay your taxes, and then you say ok, now I'm going on the street to say: 'I just don't...https://www.dw.com/en/chemnitz-syrian-asylum-seeker-convicted-of-killing-that-sparked-far-right-riots/a-50120472