Neo-Nazi Terror Cell: Intelligence Agency Hindered Murder Probe
In 2006, the neo-Nazi terror cell National Socialist Underground murdered a man working in an Internet café. One of the witnesses later turned out to be an employee of a German intelligence agency. Now SPIEGEL has learned that the agency tried to block the murder investigation.
When Andreas T. entered the Internet café at Holländische Strasse 82 in the central German city of Kassel, Halit Yozgat had less than a quarter of an hour to live. As usual, the intelligence officer hesitated at the door. He checked whether any of his colleagues were nearby.
T. worked for the Kassel office of the Hesse branch of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. He didn’t want to be seen when he tried to make contact with women online.
The coast was clear on April 6, 2006. Only four customers and a child were in the store. Behind the desk sat Halit Yozgat, who worked in his father’s business. Yozgat was on the phone. With the receiver held to his ear, he pointed the agent to the computer at station #2. At 4:50 p.m. and 56 seconds, Andreas T. logged on to the ilove.de dating site under the user name “wildman70”.
The minutes and seconds that followed this moment have now become the focus of a number of parliamentary investigative committees, numerous public prosecutors and a host of investigators throughout Germany. Shortly after the local intelligence official — code name: Alexander Thomsen — started to flirt online on that fateful Thursday in Kassel, Halit Yozgat died only a few meters away. He was killed with two shots to the head fired from the same Ceska 83 pistol that members of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) used to kill a total of nine men of Turkish and Greek origin before their terrorist cell was finally exposed in November 2011.
Since then, Germany has had to live with the realization that its well-equipped security apparatus was incapable of even recognizing the existence of such a murderous group for nearly 14 years. The revelation that an intelligence official involved in the fight against right-wing extremism was on the scene of one of these murders sparked a torrent of conspiracy theories.