North cross

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Nordkreuz was the name of a group of at least 54 right-wing extremist German preppers who are said to have prepared for an expected state collapse on "Day X" and a subsequent mass killing of refugee aid workers who were seen as political opponents . The group was formed in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania at the beginning of 2016 and became known in August 2017. With Südkreuz , Westkreuz and similar groups, she was part of the right-wing extremist Hannibal network that was discovered in 2018.

discovery

During the terrorist investigations against Bundeswehr soldiers from 2017 , which were primarily directed against the right-wing extremist Lieutenant Franco Albrecht and his contacts, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) also came across Horst S., a former Air Force officer and major in the reserve. During his interrogation by the State Security on July 13, 2017, he testified that a group “Nord”, consisting predominantly of former elite soldiers, was preparing specifically for the collapse of public order on “Day X”. At least one member of the group had collected names, addresses and photographs of target people from “hatred of the left ” and refugees who had to “go”. He saw the folder with these data and a weapons depot. At a meeting of four members of the group, the owner of the weapons stash said that people "who benefit from the refugee policy" should "be collected and taken to a place where they are to be killed" in the event of a crisis. He judged this to be mere "concerned citizens" mind games. Only two group members would have represented this "more radical direction".

Horst S. denied any contact with Franco A., but admitted that he had bought books about the Waffen-SS through the far-right Thule seminar , allegedly out of sheer interest in his grandfather's biography. Via the contact details of his cell phone, the investigators came across six Mecklenburg preppers who were talking about an expected state collapse in their chat group "Nordkreuz" and who wanted to use it to kill left opponents. The Attorney General arranged a simultaneous search of the house of these six people. On August 28, 2017, the federal police seized hard drives and data carriers. Two of the six people were arrested and accused of preparing "serious acts of violence that endanger the state" (terrorist attacks). The others were first heard as witnesses. On September 4, 2017, the Interior Committee of the German Bundestag first learned about the North Cross Group and the content of its communication.

Members

The founder and leader of the group as well as the administrator of their chat was the long-time LKA officer Marko G. from Banzkow , who belonged to a special task force (SEK). He used to be a long-distance spy and parachutist, as a SEK member he is a precision shooter trained to rescue hostages. According to research by the taz , he was already noticed in the Bundeswehr with an “interest in recent military history” from the Nazi era. In 1993 he was with a unit in a Brandenburg tank battalion, from which a submachine gun of the Uzi type disappeared. She was found in Marko G.'s apartment in 2019. During his advanced training as a senior police force, he brought books about the Wehrmacht and the SS to work and wore t-shirts with right-wing extremist slogans. In 2009, at least two police officers reported his behavior orally and in writing to their superiors, but they did nothing. The alarming note to the head of the State Criminal Police Office about Marko G.'s undifferentiated interest in National Socialism and the SS petered out. From 2015 Marko G. administered the chat groups of the members of the North Cross under the pseudonym "Hombre", organized meetings, collected money for their depots and assigned them tasks. In November 2016, when his group was already known to investigators, he sent a trainer at the private shooting range for special forces in Güstrow a video of a nutcracker moving his right arm up and saying " Sieg Heil ". In January 2017 the shooting trainer sent him rules on “keeping the German race clean” from 1938. On April 20, 2017, the “ Führer birthday ”, Marko G. sent him a picture of Adolf Hitler with the inscription “Happy Birthday”.

The two accused by the Federal Public Prosecutor are the lawyer Jan Hendrik H. from Rostock and the chief detective Haik J. from Grabow . Jan Hendrik H. was a member of the FDP in Rostock's citizenship and resigned in 2015, but kept his mandate. In 2017 he was the deputy chairman of the "Independent Citizens for Rostock" (UFR), which was Rostock's mayor until 2019. Haik J. worked in the Ludwigslust police station . Among other things, he is accused of having used his office computer to research personal data from left-wing political opponents.

Further members are the Bundeswehr major Horst S. from Krakow am See (until March 2017 Deputy Chief of the Reservists Association of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) and the master craftsman Axel M. from Crivitz . Around 30 male members met there, sometimes with women and children. Most of the members live in towns between Schwerin , Hagenow and Ludwigslust. At least two of them (Marko G. and Haik J.) are members of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD). Almost all of them are reservists in the Bundeswehr in the district of Laage Air Base . Jan Hendrik H. stated that he was a combat swimmer with the NVA .

After the raid, Marko G. told Panorama magazine that the group was made up of bankers, doctors, athletes, technicians, engineers, police officers and self-employed craftsmen. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), most of the members come from the armed forces and police forces of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , including several former SEK members. They all have access to weapons, ammunition and are skilled shooters.

Frank T., the owner of the shooting range and shooting trainer at Baltic Shooters in Güstrow, was a member of Nordkreuz until 2017. Marko G. and the trainer with whom he exchanged right-wing extremist chat messages were employed by Frank T. He is a multiple German master with the handgun and trains special forces from Germany and abroad, including special task forces, riot police, teams from GSG 9 of the federal police , from the Cobra commando from Austria, SWAT teams from the USA and soldiers from the special forces command (KSK) . Its annual three-day “Special Forces Workshop” is attended by the best professional shooters from the security authorities and sponsored by large armaments companies. Until 2018, the co-organizer was the State Criminal Police Office, where Marko G. worked. As a result, and through course participants from the police, Frank T's company received precise insights into internal police matters. Other members of the North Cross bought weapons and ammunition from him and took part in his training courses. The patron and frequent visitor of the annual meeting was Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier (CDU). His state interior ministry continued the cooperation with T's company for two years until summer 2019.

aims

According to the Federal Prosecutor General in August 2017, at least some members of the group were preparing for the collapse of the social and state order on a "day X". They believed that the government's refugee policy would impoverish private and public budgets, and that attacks and other crimes would increase. They saw the impending crisis as an opportunity "to arrest representatives of the left-wing political spectrum and to kill them with their weapons". They exchanged ideas and made appropriate preparations.

Axel M. named the Austrian Walter K. Eichelburg, an author of right-wing extremist conspiracy theories, as the source of ideas . He claims that Muslims are preparing for an early uprising ("Muslim revolt") and will then conquer the cities. Vigilante groups would have to start the "reconquest" from the country. "Blood will flow without end". Muslims have to be crucified or impaled , as well as some politicians and bureaucrats who are "left-wing green", so that everyone can see who the enemies are and "what happens to them if they do not surrender voluntarily."

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Storage depots and bunkers

The preppers communicated via the encrypted messenger service Telegram . According to Axel M., they are expecting climate disasters, power outages, a “wave of refugees” of Muslim migrants and a bank crash. That is why each member created an "iron reserve" for "Day X" from canned food, emergency power generators, weapons and ammunition. Some had built bunkers under their houses, others just dumped dried fruit and water.

According to the investigation, members of the group had set up depots with fuel, food and ammunition. Each member paid around 600 euros for this into a joint fund. The operator of a shooting range near Rostock sold weapons to members. An instructor at the Bundeswehr air base in Laage invited them to the security area after work, where they were allowed to fly the Eurofighter in the flight simulator . The accused lawyer Jan Hendrik H. is said to have held a shooting competition at birthday parties behind his house and named a challenge cup as a prize after Mehmet Turgut from Rostock, the fifth of nine murder victims in the NSU's Ceska series of murders .

Weapons and ammunition

As hunters or marksmen, all members of the Nordkreuz had legal weapons, drove together to target practice in Güstrow, to the police shooting range in Plate near Schwerin or to the shooting range in Schwerin-Hagenow under the umbrella of the Bundeswehr reservists' association. There they regularly met the former Bundeswehr major Horst S., who had her cell phone data.

In September 2017, the police found both legal and illegal weapons at Nordkreuz's founder, Marko G. The Schwerin public prosecutor's office then investigated him for violations of the War Weapons Control Act and the Weapons Act . It turned out that since at least April 2012 around 10,000 cartridges of ammunition had been stolen from the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania State Criminal Police Office and passed on to Marko G. and the Nordkreuz group. Three former SEK officers were suspected of theft and disclosure. A seven-person LKA special commission and police stations from other federal states spent months investigating their own colleagues and were sealed off in order to rule out leaks from the authorities. On June 12, 2019, the Schwerin public prosecutor arrested the four SEK officials for violating the War Weapons Control Act and the Weapons Act as well as for fraud. The investigators searched their apartments and offices in Güstrow, Waldeck , Banzkow and in the LKA in Rampe near Schwerin.

During the second search in June 2019, the investigators found other weapons in Marko G's house and that of his in-laws, including the Uzi that had been stolen from the armed forces, an illegal silencer , sporting weapons, two Glock and Ruger pistols, stun grenades, gunpowder, Telescopic batons and a wanted Winchester rifle. In both raids they found a total of around 55,000 rounds of ammunition. This came to a large extent from police stocks of seven federal states, the federal police , the armed forces and customs . How she got to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has not yet been clarified and was not followed up in the later criminal proceedings against Marko G.

Some of the cartridges found at Marko G. had been delivered to the Baltic Shooters company or to Frank T., others to the LKA, the police administration or the SEK Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which had trained on that shooting range for years. Marko G. may have stolen this ammunition on the square or received it from someone there. Ammunition packages intended for the federal and state police forces may also have been sent to him by accomplices or handed over to him in Güstrow. Units of almost all recipients of the ammunition found were temporarily in Güstrow. Some ammunition manufacturers brought their own cartridges to the annual workshop. According to witnesses, these were lying there openly, the consumption had not been documented and controlled. In contrast, when asked, the Ministry of the Interior stated that consumption had been recorded on site. The LKA did not carry out any checks on persons or luggage. Whether and which authorities Frank T. and his employees subjected to a security check before they were given permission for the training courses remained unanswered. An employee of the district who had issued Marko G. gun ownership cards was in turn a member of the reservists' association, from which many members of the North Cross came. He later testified that Marko G. was registered with the district as a weapons expert. He confiscated his weapons and ammunition during the first search, but allowed him to give his legal weapons and cartridges to an arms dealer of his choice. G. chose Frank T .; what he received and did with it remained unclear. He is also said to have consumed stolen ammunition from G's possession and thus thwarted the clarification of their origin. According to experts, used and consumed ammunition is not checked at the SEKs in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, unlike at the patrol police. The large amount of ammunition diverted for Nordkreuz shows this deficiency.

In the criminal proceedings against Marko G. it became known that the Uzi submachine gun had been stolen by the German armed forces in 1993 when he was being trained there. According to media research, it was stolen from a tank that had broken open at the Lehnin military training area near Potsdam. 1400 of 55,300 cartridges found on him were subject to the War Weapons Control Act and were only allowed to be sold to police authorities and the military.

Marko G. was temporarily seconded to the Rostock water police. In November 2019, investigators found right-wing extremist statements by the water police officer Sven J. from Rostock in his chat messages. As a result, disciplinary proceedings were initiated against him and his home was searched. Illegal cartridges, weapons and Nazi devotional items were found there. It is unclear whether Sven J. was a member of Nordkreuz. The Schwerin public prosecutor did not see sufficient suspicion and left the proceedings to the Rostock public prosecutor's office. Sven J.'s contacts with Marko G. only found out about this in 2020 through press inquiries and stated that chat messages had not been relevant to the investigation so far. Sven J. has been deployed nine times in police missions abroad since 2010, including when Marko G. was already being investigated. At the beginning of 2018, Sven J. took part in the Frontex mission “Poseidon” against “illegal migration” and smugglers on the island of Samos for four weeks . According to information from the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Interior Committee, his right-wing extremist attitude was noticed too late.

From 2009 to 2019, five special units from Switzerland also took part in the annual workshops at the Bockhorst shooting range in Güstrow . The companies RUAG and B&T presented their weapons there and provided practice ammunition. In the trial against Marko G. it turned out that more than 4000 cartridges of the ammunition found on him came from RUAG and that 1750 of them had been sent directly to Frank T. It is unclear whether this person or a third party passed them on or Marko G. or others stole them for Nordkreuz. RUAG did not provide any information about its customers and denied that there was a shortage of ammunition after the target practice. The five special units denied any knowledge of Frank T.'s contacts with Nordkreuz and emphasized that their participation in his workshops was covered by the Swiss-German police contract. The Zurich police unit Skorpion offered its own workshops in Güstrow in 2016; In 2017 Frank T. visited her in Zurich. The Zurich City Police did not explain the purpose of these contacts. Frank T. refused to provide information on press inquiries. As a temporary member of the Nordkreuz he had advised Marko G.: “The better the communication, the easier it is to organize and collect among each other on day X. But until then, it is important for each of us to attract as little attention as possible.” As a witness in the process against Marko G. he denied any knowledge of the right-wing extremist motives and plans of the group.

Enemy lists

According to initial reports, Jan Hendrik H. kept a list of more than 5000 names and addresses of alleged opponents in his legal office, including public officials, journalists and around a hundred politicians, mostly from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. He took the names from public sources and kept the list with no evidence of intent to kill. Haik J. is said to have spied on the registration data of political opponents via his office computer. In the confiscated data of the members of the North Cross, the investigators later found a total of around 25,000 names and addresses of people listed as enemies. This was announced by the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection at the end of July 2018.

Enemy lists have long been common in the right-wing extremist spectrum in Germany. The Nordkreuzliste is the most comprehensive list of its kind to date. It is available to the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND), the Stuttgarter Zeitung and the Stuttgarter Nachrichten as an Excel file. It includes 24,522 names and addresses of left activists, punks , politicians and well-known artists from all over Germany. This data comes from a customer file hacked in 2015 by the Duisburg online mail order company Impact Mailorder with around 40,000 names of customers and business partners. On July 14, 2017, the AfD member of the state parliament, Heiner Merz, distributed the hacked around 25,000 names, addresses and e-mail addresses of alleged Antifa people as an e-mail attachment. He called on AfD members to “save, distribute and use” the list, namely to look for people from their local environment, to make them known locally and to denounce them to their employers: “There are few limits to your imagination. “After the same data appeared at Nordkreuz, Merz claimed that he had received the list from an Antifa dropout and that he was“ mistaken ”. The terrorist group “ Revolution Chemnitz ” also had access to the list circulating in the right-wing extremist scene .

During a second raid in April 2018, the investigators found parts of the customer database hacked in 2015 on electronic data carriers belonging to Nordkreuz members. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, they wanted to use the list of hackers to specify information about possible target persons. While some data carriers, according to the BKA, contained tens of thousands of data records from the hacked customer file, other information was individually compiled from publicly available newspaper articles, records or excerpts from websites. According to police protocols confirmed by investigators, interrogated members of the North Cross such as Horst S. testified that they wanted to use the lists to find “left personalities” in order to “liquidate them in the event of a conflict”. In addition, Jan Hendrik H. planned to issue his comrades with stamps on the Bundeswehr's headers from “day X” so that they could get to the “operational areas” for the planned killings more quickly.

The accused denied any intention to kill. According to the investigators, however, they had prepared with "enormous intensity" for "Day X" by collecting the 25,000 names and addresses with the help of police computers. Most of the people named on the list are from the regional environment of the "prepper", especially local politicians from the SPD , Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen , Die Linke and CDU , who showed themselves to be "refugee friends" and had done refugee work. Each group member systematically searched villages and communities in their surroundings for possible target persons, especially in Wismar , Ludwigslust, Schwerin and the region around Perleberg and Pritzwalk in the north of Brandenburg. In addition, the Nordkreuzprepper collected personal data from all over Germany, also there mainly from left-wing people and those who have made positive comments about refugees and asylum seekers .

Further personal files were found in a yellow folder and an envelope that the investigators had confiscated from Jan Hendrik H. and Haik J. during their raids in 2017/18. They contained photographs and detailed information, also about contact persons. The Rostock lawyer had handwritten notes about name changes, birth names and dates as well as new registration addresses after 29 names. The 29 people include members of the state parliament of the Left Party, several members of the Rostock city council and experts who had invited city council committees in which H. was a member. You are involved in a Rostock civic alliance against the right or organize the memorial for the Rostock NSU murder victim Mehmet Turgut. According to her information, not all of them knew Jan Hendrik H. personally. His records also contained telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and newspaper articles on the refugee crisis in 2015 , but ended in 2016. As of June 28, 2019, BKA investigators presented the 29 people with two files with a total of 500 pages and asked them about the origin of the files they contained Information. Several of the respondents expressed surprise that the LKA did not inform them promptly, but only the BKA two years later.

Some of these witnesses had received an anonymous death threat as a letter in 2015 and therefore received temporary police protection. The sender of the threat has not been identified. At that time, the state security had drawn up the floor plan of the apartment of a person concerned, but did not contact the apartment owner afterwards. The sketch was now found among the accused Nordkreuzler. How this came into their possession is unclear. The investigators suspect that the criminal investigator Haik J. used his access to the police computer to research such details. Journalists suspect that he may have been involved in the 2015 investigation or that state security did not protect confidential data.

As of July 12, 2019, RND research published details of the lists. According to this, people from 7963 locations in Germany and abroad are listed:

Place / region Affected Informed
Country MV ~ 1200 by LKA letter
from July 22, 2019
Berlin 861 -
State of Saxony-Anhalt 471 Legal advice only
from July 26, 2019
Hamburg 364 -
Leipzig 259 -
Munich 259 -
Stuttgart region ~ 200 -
Cologne 187 -
Dresden 164 -
country Brandenburg 160 by LKA letter
from July 12, 2019
Hanover 120 -
Kiel 112 -
Rostock 102 29 of them by BKA
from June 28, 2019
Stuttgart ~ 100 -
Gera 92 -
Frankfurt am Main 70 -
Jena 67 -
Potsdam 53 -
Erfurt 51 -
Halle / Saale 49 -
Goerlitz 40 -
Meissen 19th -
Chub 16 -
Torgau 15th -

In Baden-Württemberg, in addition to 100 people from Stuttgart, a total of around 200 people from Böblingen , Esslingen am Neckar , Ludwigsburg , Göppingen and the Rems-Murr district are affected. Your addresses are also from the customer file that was hacked in 2015.

How many lists of what size and origin were found among the accused and witnesses is still unclear. It is clear, however, that the ascertained data is not just the list that was published in 2015 as a customer database of an alternative mail order company and that was slightly changed a few months later and circulated on right-wing extremist sites as the so-called "Antifa list". Rather, the Nordkreuz members are said to have carried out their own intensive research into the personal data of their victims. The information provided by the federal and state governments on the scope of the lists and references to the respective federal states is also contradictory.

Killing planning

According to taz research, members of Nordkreuz advised Schwerin at the beginning of 2017 on where they could intern their political opponents on "Day X", talked about warehouses and shootings, and asked the reservists' company commander whether they should not be able to evacuate people in an "emergency" Organize trucks of the Bundeswehr and thus overcome possible roadside checks.

At the beginning of 2017, two former paratroopers as well as Haik J. and Marko G. exchanged right-wing extremist ideas in their own Telegram chat group called “Four Wins”, according to the federal government. According to BKA information (July 2019), they called refugees "invaders", against whom one had to use armed force if necessary.

According to a report by the RND, Nordkreuz wanted to order 200 body bags and quicklime (slaked lime). With quick lime corpses can be made unrecognizable faster and their decomposition in mass graves accelerated. The intention to order emerged from a three-page handwritten list with order addresses for these materials, contacts and housing relationships. The BfV presented the document to the Bundestag in June 2019. The Federal Prosecutor's Office requested extended surveillance measures against the group because of the find.

Networking

According to research by the taz published in November 2018, Nordkreuz was part of a network of comparable prepper and chat groups that were preparing for an armed coup on a "day X". The administrator of the network under the code name “Hannibal” was the Bundeswehr soldier André S., a former member of the Special Forces Command (KSK). After leaving the KSK, he was an “information person” for right-wing extremist tendencies in the Bundeswehr for the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD). On September 13, 2017, he learned from a MAD employee that the federal prosecutor was investigating the Nordkreuz group. After that, André S. probably warned other preppers of further upcoming searches and interviews. He was interrogated as a result of the subsequent criminal proceedings against his MAD informant. His role as network administrator and co-founder of the Uniter association emerged. His network also included other chat groups, including “Nord”, “Nord.Com”, “Ost”, “West” and “Süd”, organized along the geographical division of the military administration , as well as groups in Austria and Switzerland . After Franco A. was arrested and charged as a suspected right-wing terrorist, "Hannibal" had all chats of these groups deleted.

It is unclear whether André S. was informed about Nordkreuz's plans. The "Südkreuz" and "Westkreuz" departments allied with it, as well as a support group in and around Berlin, had no enemy lists of their own according to the investigations made so far.

References to the AfD

After the allegations against the criminal police officer Haik J. became known, the AfD Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania appointed him to a party working group on internal security at the end of 2017 . In January 2018 she elected him deputy chairman of her technical committee 5 “Internal Security, Justice and Data Protection”. He was a constituency employee for the then AfD member of the state parliament, Holger Arppe . The accused lawyer Jan Hendrik H. had good contact with him. Nordkreuz founder Marko G. is also an AfD member. After the media published chat minutes Arppe with execution requests against political opponents ("I want to see her hanging, dig a pit, everyone in and slaked lime up"), the AfD excluded him from the party in early 2018.

After initial media reports on the Hannibal network, the Federal Prosecutor's Office had the apartments of seven people searched in twelve locations on April 23, 2018, including Holger Arppe's. This was previously a consequence of those chat logs because of sedition has been indicted. The investigators copied his computer and cell phone data and interrogated him for seven hours as a witness to the North Cross chats.

There is no reliable evidence that Arppe belonged to Nordkreuz. But in May 2015 he had chatted with other AfD members about a member of the Green Party in Rostock: “Do we need his address? Tonight I have to feed my office computer with its data. ”The Green's name and handwritten private address were on Nordkreuz's list of enemies.

State measures

observation

According to its own information, the BfV has been observing Nordkreuz since autumn 2016 with all available intelligence services. In response to a request from MP Martina Renner ( Die Linke ), the Federal Government replied that the BfV first received knowledge of Nordkreuz in June 2017 and then informed the BKA, among other things. On the other hand, it said in the same answer that the BKA had learned about the chat groups through a testimony in July 2017 and in turn informed the BfV.

As a result of the group's discovery, the interior ministers of the federal states decided in December 2017 to include the nationwide knowledge of the police and the intelligence services on the prepper scene in their situation reports in order to examine its composition and goals, proximity to weapons, possible radicalization tendencies and references to extremism.

Disciplinary and criminal proceedings

The State Ministry of the Interior initially allowed Marko G. to continue working as a police officer, since the Federal Public Prosecutor had not classified him as a suspect. He and Haik J. were only suspended from duty in January 2018. Marko G. only came into custody in June 2019 after more stolen weapons and ammunition were found on him. All illegal and legal weapons in his possession were seized. His gun ownership cards were revoked. A disciplinary action was brought against him and a trial opened on November 20, 2019 in Schwerin for illegal hoarding of weapons and ammunition.

After the first raid on six Nordkreuz members, the LKA Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania initiated proceedings against four of them, all police officers, for violations of the weapons law. The SEK ammunition procurers were suspended from duty and are to be expelled from the SEK. Two of the suspended SEK officers were arrested because of the risk of escape. Interior Minister Caffier had four other SEK officials transferred as a precaution because they were in close contact with Marko G. and the other SEK officials through chats. The firing range operator in Güstrow was terminated. The shooting training was reorganized to prevent ammunition theft. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is to check all applicants for the state police in the future, and the SEK service is to be limited to ten years.

After a ruling by the Bonn District Court in March 2019, the Bundeswehr Reservists Association had to re-admit four Nordkreuz members who were excluded in 2018, including the two accused by the Attorney General and one of the SEK officials suspected of stealing ammunition. The court saw no evidence of their anti-constitutional sentiments. Belonging to the chat group "Nordkreuz" and the prepper scene are not a violation of the free democratic basic order . While the reservists' association emphasized that the four members of the Northern Cross no longer took part in the usual target drills and Bundeswehr training, the Bundeswehr regional command did not rule this out.

On December 19, 2019, the Schwerin Regional Court sentenced the Nordkreuzleiter Marko G. to a suspended sentence of 21 months in prison. The verdict remained well below the sentence demanded by the prosecutor. The presiding judge justified this with the fact that Marko G. legally owned many weapons and 30,000 rounds of ammunition, credibly regretted his act and showed that he was willing to cooperate. The fact that he illegally obtained less ammunition from the authorities than before after the first house search was "already going in the right direction". He also did not commit any further crimes with the weapons and ammunition. The cash book for the joint purchase of ammunition by the Nordkreuzgruppe speaks against criminal energy: "If you plan to commit crimes, you don't just write it down." Although some of his comments in chats were unconstitutional, his political views should be separated from his motive. The judge classified this as “enthusiasm for weapons, which was noticeable until the end”. The public prosecutor's office applied for a revision, mainly because it did not accept Marko G.'s lack of right-wing extremist motivation in his weapons and ammunition collection.

In April 2020, eleven disciplinary proceedings were ongoing against alleged right-wing extremist police officers in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. According to the Interior Ministry, eight of them were related to the Marko G. case.

According to the federal government, officials from the BKA, the federal police, including the GSG 9, several state police forces and foreign special forces regularly used the shooting range in Güstrow between 2010 and 2018. There was never a security check of the place because the checking of operators of private shooting ranges, which were allowed under trade and weapons law, is not required by law. In addition, according to the federal government, there was no reason to do so in this case, as the LKA Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania initially provided content and technical support for the workshops and these later took place under the patronage of the State Minister of the Interior. The customs authorities continue to use the Güstrow shooting range for regular shooting and operational training, although the proximity of the owner to Nordkreuz is known. Some of the ammunition stolen for Nordkreuz came from customs. The Schwerin public prosecutor's office is investigating an employee of a weapons authority: He is said to have removed confiscated cartridges in return for a monetary consideration.

Information for those affected

In September 2017, the BKA handed over 1477 records on thousands of people to the LKA Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The 29 additional names were known in October 2017, but were initially classified as information for police purposes only and not as a list of people at risk. In 2018, the BKA presented the LKA with the results of its raids and a risk assessment. The State Ministry of the Interior was responsible for informing the listed people, but Caffier always refused. He did not want to talk about “death lists”, nor inform his colleagues in the state parliament about it, nor instruct the LKA to inform listed persons because he saw no risk to them. The BKA then informed those 29 people about their possible risk by July 12, 2019. The BKA assumed an "abstract risk situation" for the approximately 25,000 people on the list discovered in 2018 and did not inform them. The Federal Ministry of the Interior has so far refused to provide further information on possible “death lists” because of the ongoing investigations.

The Brandenburg State Criminal Police Office stated that they had not yet informed the citizens of Brandenburg on the list because the Internet dealer had already informed them of the hacker attack and the access to their data. There are no specific hazard warnings for them. But now they want to send information letters to them. The Brandenburg Association of Victims' Perspective criticized the fact that the police and the BKA had failed to inform those at risk of right-wing terror for two years.

After the order list for body bags and quick lime became known, the danger situation for the people threatened by Nordkreuz was classified as far more serious. Various politicians called on the federal authorities to abandon their previous policy of non-information on the lists and to inform all around 25,000 people affected. Lars Klingbeil (SPD) emphasized that the state owes a complete clarification to the people who are on the Northern Cross lists. Possible connections to the police, reservists and the AfD would have to be uncovered and right-wing terror networks "dried up". Theories of single perpetrators must be over. Konstantin von Notz (Greens) called for coordinated offers of help for those affected by the federal government. Katja Kipping (Die Linke) demanded that all 25,000 people on the northern cross lists “be informed immediately”.

On July 18, 2019, representatives of all opposition parties except the AfD in the Bavarian state parliament called for personal protection for citizens threatened by Nordkreuz. Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann rejected this and emphasized that the Federal Prosecutor's Office alone decides on the publication of the lists. These right-wing terrorist groups could use them for threats.

On July 19, 2019, the BKA ruled out a specific and current endangerment of the listed persons, institutions and organizations and denied that they were “enemy lists or even death lists”. Gathering information about "the political opponent" and announcing their names is common in politically motivated crime and increasingly affects public figures , officials, citizens' groups and media institutions. The main goal is to "stir up fear and spread uncertainty."

From July 22, 2019, the State Ministry of the Interior informed around 1,200 citizens of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania by letter that they were on the North Cross lists. Interior Minister Caffier announced this, but at the same time emphasized that he would continue to rule out their endangerment. The information letters mention “collections of material” with “personal data about you”, but without details on the investigation, the accused and the possible purpose of the lists. Instead, referring to the BKA, they reject the terms “enemy list” or “death list”. In response to a parliamentary question, Caffier replied that a suspect had made queries in the country's population registration system in February and March 2017. Such collections on "politically different thinkers" are "not uncommon in the right and left-wing extremist area" and are generally not accompanied by immediate danger. Letter recipients called this information policy a "bad joke" and a "complete disaster".

According to a report in the magazine Fakt , the LKAs treat right-wing extremist enemy lists very differently depending on the federal state, so that many people affected feel intimidated and left alone by the state. In Hesse and Thuringia the police informed those affected early, in Bavaria the LKA sent them forms for criminal charges, in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony the LKAs left the local police stations to decide on a message, in Rhineland-Palatinate the LKA checked for six months the appearance of a list as to whether the victims should be informed, in Saxony-Anhalt they waited for those affected to ask the police themselves, in Brandenburg they were not informed, but complaints were made for them nonetheless, in Baden-Württemberg, Saxony, In Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and Berlin the LKAs found no evidence of a criminal offense and did not inform anyone independently. Although the BKA did not know the authors of the list either, it classified the named persons as not endangered and stated that informing them would lead to “uncertainty that is not justified from the police point of view”. Politicians are demanding a body from the federal government that is to coordinate the various criminal proceedings on the same list of enemies.

In 2018, the Hamburg Ministry of the Interior and Sports had denied that Hamburgers were on Nordkreuz's "enemy list", but confirmed in August 2019, when asked by the Hamburg parliamentary group, that 364 people are listed in the Hamburg area, 236 of them with a Hamburg registration address. 24 people are available twice. The authority ruled out any information even to those affected because, according to the BKA, they are currently not at risk. After criticism, the Hamburg State Criminal Police Office set up an information hotline (040 - 428677055) to ask whether you were on the list.

Arne Semsrott ( FragDenStaat ) has been suing the BKA since August 2019, demanding that all those affected be informed of their entries in the enemy lists of Nordkreuz. On August 19, 2019, the Wiesbaden Administrative Court ruled that the BKA did not have to publish the lists of enemies and closed the proceedings.

For Sascha Lobo ( Der Spiegel ), the random, uncoordinated handling of German security authorities with lists of enemies shows a "Nazi ignorance". Since the northern cross lists were created by former police and army members, some of whom were even monitored, and apartment sketches and addresses from police computers ended up in right-wing extremist hands, one could no longer assume effective data protection with the police. The rule of law surrenders to dangerous internal networks. Politicians play down suspected right-wing terrorists who wanted to order body bags and are actively preparing for mass murders as “preppers”. To this day, she still does not understand the new internet-based means of these networks: to communicate decentrally and secretly in encrypted chat groups, to use social media to build up and reinforce a conspiracy-theoretical worldview, to fantasize about a self-defense situation, to constantly stand up for the "X day" of accounting and the Ready to overthrow and publicly mark and intimidate enemies with circulating death lists. The various lists should be understood as a decentralized collection of data for this fascist , racist overthrow and an appeal to right-wing violent criminals to commit mass murder. You are just destined to fall into the wrong hands.

enlightenment

After the raid in August 2017, Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier set up a commission to investigate the prepper scene, which, however, had not yet submitted a report two years later. In August 2018, after a request for freedom of information, Caffier's ministry rejected the publication of the commission's report on the prepper scene, of which there were allegedly only drafts until then. The transparency initiative FragDenStaat filed a lawsuit against this.

A three-person commission of experts should “thoroughly examine” the country's special forces by the end of October 2019. However, more than a dozen parliamentary questions about Nordkreuz and the Hannibal network remained unanswered because of the ongoing investigations, including the question of why the proceedings against the three Nordkreuz members and the two SEK officials are being conducted separately and the evidence is not regarded as the formation of a terrorist organization . It is still unclear why the authorities, knowing those chat groups, their contacts with Franco Albrecht and the right-wing extremist attitude of some members, did not initiate an investigation into a possible terrorist organization.

The commission of inquiry appointed by Lorenz Caffier, which was headed by Heinz Fromm , presented its approximately 100-page report on November 26, 2019, but only published an eight-page summary of it. After that, right-wing extremist police officers were able to take over the opinion leadership in a SEK unit because their superiors did nothing about it. The Schlewsig-Hosteins state office had almost no knowledge of its own about the group and its members. Thereupon Caffier placed the SEK under the riot police instead of the LKA and transferred a leader and the SEK head, but this to the department of right-wing extremism in the constitutional protection of the country.

According to the federal government, the hard core of the group with Marko G. represents “a solid right-wing extremist attitude”. To a further parliamentary question from Martina Renner, the federal government replied in May 2020 that it had no knowledge of the origin of the illegal ammunition shares of Marko G. The public prosecutor's office in Schwerin is responsible for this. The latter had completed the proceedings against him without clarifying the origin of the ammunition and considered the exact tracking of the ammunition routes in the ongoing proceedings against three ex-colleagues of Marko G. to be too time-consuming. Other federal states failed to conduct their own investigations or handed them over to the Schwerin public prosecutors. Renner criticized: “The official lack of interest in clearing up the Nordkreuz complex is scandalous. As long as this culture of looking away is not changed, the networks remain a threat. "

Additional information

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Case Franco A .: BKA has evidence of a network within the Bundeswehr. Focus Online , November 9, 2018.
  2. ↑ Extremism - Schwerin: Kipping demands information on the "Nordkreuz" list. dpa / Süddeutsche Zeitung , 7 July 2019.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Jörg Köpke: Mecklenburg and the Iron Reserve. Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung , September 15, 2017.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Christina Schmidt, Sebastian Erb: Right-wing terror in Germany: On the enemy list. taz , July 6, 2019.
  5. ^ "Nordkreuz" group: SEK policeman fell on Der Spiegel , August 7, 2020 , with right-wing extremist views .
  6. ↑ a b c d Christina Schmidt, Sebastian Erb, Natalie Meinert, Daniel Schulz: Right prepper group Nordkreuz: The trace to Güstrow. taz, April 4, 2020
  7. ^ A b Christian Althoff: Police ammunition in the wrong hands. Westfalenblatt, March 2, 2020
  8. ↑ a b Right Terror: Everything we know about the alleged right-wing terrorist cell in Mecklenburg. Vice , August 29, 2017.
  9. ↑ a b c Martina Renner & Sebastian Wehrhahn: Shadow Army or Individual Cases? - Rights structures in the security authorities | CILIP Institute and Journal. Retrieved April 17, 2020 (German).
  10. ^ A b Fabienne Hurst, Robert Bongen , Julian Feldmann: Right-wing terror investigations: Founder of the "Prepper" group is a police officer. Panorama , September 7, 2017.
  11. ↑ a b c 200 body bags and quick lime ordered: Right-wing extremist network planned attacks on political opponents. Tagesspiegel , June 28, 2019.
  12. ^ A b c d Martin Kaul , Christina Schmidt, Daniel Schulz: Right network in the Bundeswehr: Hannibal's shadow army. taz, November 16, 2018.
  13. ↑ Julian Feldmann: Again weapons found in "preppers": No systematic recording by authorities. NDR , September 19, 2017.
  14. ^ Stefan Ludmann: After SEK arrests: Caffier informs the Interior Committee. NDR, June 13, 2019.
  15. ^ Matthias Gebauer, Sven Röbel, Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt and Jean-Pierre Ziegler: raid on SEK officials. 10,000 shots for "Day X". Spiegel Online , June 12, 2019.
  16. ↑ a b Andreas Becker: “Rambo Feeling”: SEK policeman hoards weapons and ammunition. Nordkurier, November 18, 2019
  17. ↑ Charges against alleged "Nordkreuz" founder. RND, September 19, 2019
  18. ↑ a b Christina Schmidt, Sebastian Erb: Nazi chats and foreign missions. taz, April 19, 2020
  19. ↑ January Jirat: RUAG ammunition in Preppern. WOZ, May 21, 2020
  20. ↑ Thoralf Cleven : More than 25,000 people on right-wing enemy lists. RND / Kieler Nachrichten , July 30, 2018.
  21. ↑ a b c Right-wing extremism: Terror group Nordkreuz collected data from almost 25,000 people. Focus Online, July 12, 2019.
  22. ↑ Silja Kummer: AfD MP Heiner Merz distributed stolen addresses. Heidenheimer Zeitung , March 14, 2018.
  23. ↑ Sascha Maier: 25,000 hacked addresses among right-wing terrorists: AfD member regrets sending the "Nordkreuz" list. Stuttgarter Nachrichten , July 18, 2019.
  24. ↑ Silja Kummer: AfD MP Heiner Merz distributed stolen addresses. Südwest Presse , March 14, 2018; Ragnar Vogt: E-Mail calling for denunciation: AfD MPs distributed list of alleged Antifa members. Tagesspiegel, July 13, 2019.
  25. ↑ a b Uwe Reißenweber: “Nordkreuz” group: According to the BKA there are no death lists. Nordkurier , July 19, 2019.
  26. ^ A b c Sascha Maier, Jörg Köpke: "Death lists" of right-wing extremists: data from Stuttgarters found in "Nordkreuz" searches. Stuttgarter Zeitung , July 12, 2019.
  27. ↑ a b c d "Nordkreuz" collected 25,000 addresses of political opponents. Tagesspiegel, July 6, 2019.
  28. ↑ a b Prepper network with enemy list: those affected are informed. taz, July 19, 2019.
  29. ↑ a b Frank Pubantz: death list: Held the LKA information back? Ostsee-Zeitung , June 28, 2019.
  30. ↑ Andreas Dunte: Central Germany Right Terror: Hundreds of Saxons on death list - many know nothing about it. ; Markus Decker: 259 people from Leipzig are on the list of right-wing terrorist group "Nordkreuz". Both RND / Leipziger Volkszeitung , July 19, 2019.
  31. ↑ Jan Schumann: Hundreds in the sights of the right: 471 Sachsen-Anhalter are on enemy lists. Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , July 26, 2019.
  32. ↑ Jörg Köpke : The right-wing radical “cross” connection and the Bundeswehr. RND, September 10, 2019
  33. ↑ Terror suspect AfD man responsible for internal security. Nordkurier, January 31, 2018.
  34. ↑ Christina Schmidt, Andreas Speit : Right-wing extremist scene in MeckPomm: Again raid because of "preppers". taz, April 25, 2018.
  35. ↑ German Bundestag: The Federal Government's answer to the minor question from MPs Martina Renner and others: “Right-wing networks in the police and the Bundeswehr - Findings on Franco A., Nordkreuz & Uniter e. V. “ Printed matter 19/17340, February 21, 2020
  36. ↑ Andreas Fasel: The prepper scene is targeted by the protection of the constitution. Welt Online , December 18, 2017.
  37. ^ A b Stefan Ludmann: "Nordkreuz": Investigations against police officers in MV. NDR, January 31, 2019.
  38. ^ "Nordkreuz" members remain reservists. NDR, July 17, 2019.
  39. ↑ Sebastian Erb: verdict in the prepper process: probation for the Nordkreuz admin. taz, December 19, 2019
  40. ↑ Sebastian Erb, Christina Schmidt: Right prepper group Nordkreuz: Customs continue to shoot in Güstrow. taz, June 28, 2020
  41. ^ Right-wing terror network LKA: 160 Brandenburgers on the list of "Nordkreuz" rbb , July 12, 2019.
  42. ↑ Sebastian Erb, Christina Schmidt: After disclosure of right-wing extremist network: Help for threatened people required. taz, July 9, 2019
  43. ^ Regina Kirschner: Bavaria: Landtag discusses death lists of right-wing extremists. BR , July 18, 2019.
  44. ^ "Nordkreuz" lists: Caffier informs those affected. NDR, July 22, 2019.
  45. ↑ Christina Schmidt, Sebastian Erb: Right prepper group “Nordkreuz”: Those affected continue to grope in the dark. taz, July 25, 2019.
  46. ↑ Arndt Ginzel , Gudrun Grossmann, Daniel Laufer: Right-wing extremist enemy lists: those affected feel left alone. Tagesschau.de / MDR , July 23, 2019.
  47. ^ Andreas Speit: "List of enemies" of the right-wing scene: Carefree authority. taz, August 8, 2019.
  48. ↑ "Enemy lists": LKA sets up information telephone. NDR, 23 August 2019.
  49. ↑ Arne Semsrott: Journalist complains about the release of enemy lists. Time online, August 14, 2019
  50. ↑ BKA does not have to publish "Nordkreuz" lists. NDR, August 19, 2019.
  51. ^ Sascha Lobo: Enemy lists of right-wing extremists: The problem of German politics is Nazi ignorance. Spiegel Online, July 24, 2019.
  52. ↑ Anna Biselli: Prepper Commission: Action against lack of transparency of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's interior ministry. Netzpolitik.org, August 22, 2019
  53. ↑ Christina Schmidt, Sebastian Erb: Investigations against Nordkreuz-Prepper: What did the protection of the constitution know? taz, March 1, 2020
  54. ^ Sebastian Erb, Daniel Schulz: Hannibal network in Meck-Pomm: right-wing extremist elite police. taz, November 26, 2019
  55. ↑ Christina Schmidt, Sebastian Erb: Right prepper group Nordkreuz: Ammunition disappeared? No matter. taz, May 12, 2020