For a year now the case of three mystery killers has roiled the German scene. Their mug shots, shown over and over on TV, have made them as recognizable as family members. The two men are dead, eliminated by rather dubious "suicides." The third, Beate Zschäpe, still awaits trial for her role in the killing, between 2000 and 2006, of ten men with immigrant background, nine Turkish and one Greek, of shooting down a policewoman, robbing banks, and igniting a bomb in 2004 in a Turkish neighborhood in Cologne which injured 22 people, four of them severely.
The ten murdered men, all shot in broad daylight at close range with the same silenced CZ 83 pistol, included a grocer, a locksmith, a tailor, and an internet café operator. Since three were vendors of the popular Turkish specialty food döner kebab the gutter press invented the nasty term "döner murders" and pushed a false line that foreign mafia-type mobs were to blame, probably fighting turf wars. The actual killer group, its size still unknown, called itself NSU for Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (National Socialist Underground), a reference to its Nazi beliefs (Hitler's party was also misnamed "Nationalsozialist"). Its aim, which found such support from part of the media, was to increase anti-foreigner animosity -- and move towards its final take-over goals. Even more earnest than the media-based racism was the reaction of the authorities, especially the government's secretive political watchdog agency called Verfassungsschutz (VS - Constitutional Protector). This VS also rejected the most obvious anti-foreigner motivation, neglected to follow up leads supplied by Swiss police as to the origin of the murder weapon, and, even more suspiciously, first denied, then distorted proof that one of its own secret agents was present at the killing in the internet shop, accepting all too quickly his alleged alibi and evidently hindering any attempt to follow up this very damning lead. The VS has continually held back details on the crimes from an all-party investigatory committee of the Bundestag and finally admitted that much of the evidence had been irrevocably shredded. Full article: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/grossman271112.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
