German police ignored neo-Nazi tips: Daily

BERLIN

Germans holding placards against a neo-Nazi rally are seen in Bad Nenndorf. EPA Photo

The neo-Nazi organization National Socialist Underground (NSU) accused of 10 murders and whose exposure shocked the country and left authorities scrambling to explain their inaction, received explosives from a police informant.


The 44-year-old man, named only as Thomas S., was a paid informant for the Berlin criminal police (LKA) between 2000 and 2011, Der Spiegel reported. He has admitted to having supplied the gang with TNT between 1996 and 1999, during which time he also had a romantic relationship with one of the gang. Although he did not tell his handlers about the explosives, he did give them several tips about where the gang was, but the Berlin authorities failed to pass this on to colleagues who were actively hunting the trio.
Uwe Böhnhardt, Uwe Mundlos and Beate Zschäpe, who formed the NSU, are thought to have killed eight shopkeepers of Turkish origin and one man from Greece in towns across the country. The parliamentary committee only discovered on Sept. 13 that Thomas S. had been an informant for the Berlin LKA, and it was not the Berlin LKA that told them, but the federal prosecutor. It now appears Thomas S. gave them clear hints about how to find the gang three times, between 2002 and 2005, but that none of this information was passed on to colleagues in Saxony actively looking for the trio.