The nsu robbery trap

Graphic: tp

How the terror group financed itself? – part 4 of the telepolis series on the "nsu"

How expensive is the underground and where is the underground? – blending a landscape.

The nsu crimes reveal a strange east-west anatomy. The assassinations were carried out in the west: nurnberg, munich, hamburg, koln, dortmund, kassel, heilbronn – the only exception being rostock. But there the victim also came from the west, from hamburg. The robberies, on the other hand, all happened in the east: chemnitz, zwickau, stralsund, arnstadt, eisenach.

Murders outside – robberies at home? Like the murders, the robberies are said to have been committed by uwe bohnhardt and uwe mundlos alone and without exception – at least according to the federal prosecutor’s office.

Part 3: an interceptor at the crime scene during the crime

How did the three suspected right-wing terrorists finance themselves in the 13 years of their illegality, from the time of their escape from jena in january 1998 until their discovery in november 2011?? This is the question. And the catch of the indictment is: by the 15 robbery traps on banks and a supermarket. But on closer inspection, there are as many inconsistencies as in the murder series.

Beate zschape’s statement to the munich higher regional court, in which she confirmed almost one-to-one the prosecution’s unproven theory that the two uwes were the sole perpetrators, does nothing to change this. Rather, zschape’s behavior itself fits into these inconsistencies.

The first robbery – and the first questions

The terror series began with a robbery – and with it the questions begin. On 18. December 1998, two masked and armed men robbed an edeka supermarket in chemnitz and stole about 30.000 german marks. During the escape they shot around. Two perpetrators? Bohnhardt and mundlos? That is not so sure.

For there is a witness who claims to have seen three masked men. A young man, then 16 years old, shot at by one of the fugitives and narrowly missed, as he described to the higher regional court in munich in june 2015. The third person is said to have been smaller than the other two, perhaps a woman. This witness was long considered missing. The indictment of the federal prosecution states: "the witness who witnessed the incident and pursued the perpetrators could not be identified." the complete truth is: he was investigated and also questioned at that time, but these investigation files no longer exist. You can read that in the indictment as well: "they have been destroyed by the chemnitz public prosecutor’s office."

In fact, the files were destroyed in 2005 and all data were deleted in 2006. Why, the authority can no longer understand – "for lack of available data", as it explains, it is possible that this was done by "accidentally" happened. The documents should not have been destroyed, robbery expires only after 20 years. Events at the chemnitz public prosecutor’s office that remind us that the office also lost investigation files on the neo-nazi and undercover agent ralf marschner from zwickau, who is to be counted among the nsu trio’s entourage, as was learned in 2016.

Of all things, a witness who can refute the official two-factor theory disappears from the files. The young man from the edeka store was finally found again during follow-up investigations by the federal criminal police office in 2015. However, the murder weapon from the robbery was never found, not even in the trio’s belongings.

Robberies in the neighborhood?

Eight of the robberies were carried out in chemnitz alone, three in zwickau. Cities where the trio had lived. Several banks are located in the immediate vicinity of different residential addresses that it had used, for example, in the same strabe. A robbed post office in chemnitz was located directly next to a hairdresser’s store where mandy s. Who was a member of the nsu and is still considered a suspect, was working there. She is one of the nine suspects under concrete investigation. Robbery objects in the immediate vicinity? What could have been useful for a possible robbery, however, would have meant a high risk of discovery in the event of a robbery.

Were bohnhardt and mundlos really the bank robbers?? They alone? Were there really only two? In none of the banks were clear traces of the two uwes found, fingerprints or dna substance. The investigators of the chemnitz police amed in their crime hypotheses that a third perpetrator could have been waiting in a getaway vehicle.

One of those who has been intensively involved in the nsu scandal since 2012 is clemens binninger (cdu), a member of the bundestag’s first committee of inquiry and currently chairman of the second. His assessment is: "bohnhardt and mundlos have certainly committed bank robberies. The question is whether they really committed all of them. It is conceivable that there were several perpetrators in this bank robbery series or that not all of them were committed by the two of them."

Behind this is the recurring question of whether the nsu actually consisted of only three people.