Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Thuringia

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The Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Thuringia ( AfV ) has been the protection of the Constitution of the Free State of Thuringia as a department of the Thuringian Ministry of Internal Affairs and Local Affairs since January 1st, 2015 . From 1991 to the end of 2014 it was an independent, higher state authority as the Thuringian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (TLfV). It uses intelligence resources for its tasks .

assignment

The task of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is to enable the competent authorities to take the necessary measures in good time to avert threats to the free democratic basic order , the existence and security of the Federation and the Länder.

construction

The following organizational units report to the President as head of the office:

  • Controlling department
  • Section 50: Policy and Legal Matters, G 10, Committee work
  • Unit 51: Press Office, Information and Public Relations
  • Unit 52: Evaluation, TIAZ
  • Unit 53: Procurement
  • Unit 54: Cross-sectional tasks, personal / material security , counter-espionage . The AfV had around 98 employees in 2017.

Budget of the former Thuringian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution:

Head of Office

On September 2, 1992, Prime Minister Bernhard Vogel ordered the head of the authority to use the official title "President of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution".

Period Surname function comment
until 1994 Harm Winkler Head of Office, President of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution
1994-2000 Helmut Roewer President of the TLfV I.a. due to an embezzlement affair involving the front company Heron Verlagsgesellschaft, initially suspended and then retired.
2000-2012 Thomas Sippel President of the TLfV Moved into temporary retirement because of his information policy on the National Socialist Underground .
2012-2015 Roger Derichs Deputy President of the TLfV (until December 31, 2014)
Vice President (since January 1, 2015)
From July 2012 to November 2015 the office of President was vacant; the authority was provisionally headed by the Vice-President.
since 2015 Stephan J. Kramer President of the AfV The former general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany was introduced as the new president of the AfV by Interior Minister Holger Poppenhäger on November 19, 2015 . He took office on December 1st.

Legal basis

The legal basis for the work of the AfV is the Thuringian Constitutional Protection Act (ThürVerfSchG) of August 8, 2014 (GVBl. 2014, 529).

control

The work in the departments in the AfV is subject to ongoing control by the Controlling department, which reports directly to the President. Parliamentary monitoring is carried out by informing the parliamentary control commission of the state parliament by the minister as well as the so-called G10 commission. In special cases, the Parliamentary Control Commission can also request direct reporting by the Controlling department.

Well-known informants

  • Kai-Uwe Trinkaus, was district chairman of NPD-Erfurt in 2007 and 2008 and has been state chairman of DVU since the end of 2008. He worked between May 2006 and September 2007 on behalf of the Thuringian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In 2012 he exposed himself publicly in conversations with journalists and stated that he had received a list of addresses and names of eleven anti-fascists from his undercover agent, which was published on the homepage of the Erfurt NPD. The public prosecutor's office in Erfurt had not been able to explain how these names had come to the NPD from police investigations. The TLfV contradicted its claims in a press release. In addition, he claims the neo-Nazi Andy F., who had already been exposed in 2007, who as an intern spied on the left faction in the Thuringian state parliament and the state association of the Jusos and to have discussed this with the state office for the protection of the constitution, but the TLfV does not want any of that in advance have known.
  • Tino Brandt , worked for the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Thuringia from 1994 to 2001; driving force in the neo-Nazi comradeship network " Thuringian Homeland Security "; member of the NPD since 1999; since April 2000 deputy state chairman of the NPD.
  • Marcel Degner, Treasurer and Section Head of Blood and Honor
  • Thomas Dienel founded the German National Party (DNP) and was an undercover agent until 2000. In 1992, Federal Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters filed an application with the Federal Constitutional Court to deprive him of his basic rights under Article 18 of the Basic Law. The application was rejected by the Federal Constitutional Court. At this point in time, the Federal Ministry of the Interior was suddenly convinced that it did not pose a threat to the free and democratic basic order.
  • Manfred Reich

In March 2015, the red-red-green state government decided to switch off all informants from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. However, there are exceptions for specific terrorist threats, which the Prime Minister and Interior Minister can agree on with the agreement of the state parliament's parliamentary control commission; In 2015 there are no more informants in the right-wing scene, but among Salafists and in the vicinity of the Kurdish PKK.

Affairs

The "Franconian Homeland Security" founded in the Coburg area in the mid-1990s was headed by an undercover agent from the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

At the end of the 1990s, the State Office managed numerous informants in the right-wing extremist scene at considerable financial expense (see also the complex but ineffective "Operation Rennsteig" ). One of the informants, Tino Brandt , headed the Thuringian homeland security , out of which three members formed the terrorist association National Socialist Underground (NSU) in 1998 after several planned bomb attacks, namely Uwe Mundlos , Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe . From 2000 to 2006 the NSU committed a series of murders against nine migrants. In addition to the execution-like murders, Mundlos and Böhnhardt committed three bomb attacks, including the nail bomb attack in Cologne , and 15 bank robberies (see crimes of the NSU ). While he was still in hiding, Brandt kept in touch with the NSU trio and in 1998 received an order from the State Office to approach the NSU trio for a special fee; Among other things, he received money that he should send to the NSU trio for forged passports. During a telephone conversation between Brandt and the NSU in March 1999, the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution failed to overhear the conversation and to inform the State Office of Criminal Investigation. By 2001, the State Office had received a total of 47 references to sources for the NSU trio, most of which were provided by Brandt, but it cannot be proven whether any of the informants knew of the crimes or even of their whereabouts. The NSU expert Tanjev Schultz judged in 2018 that the state office had used its many informers in the right-wing scene badly; it had gone "haywire" in the authority.

The intelligence service surveillance of the current Thuringian Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow also began under Roewer in the 1990s. The surveillance of the parliamentarian by the State Office was later discontinued by the Ministry of the Interior at Ramelow's insistence and the Federal Constitutional Court found it unconstitutional in October 2013 by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution .

On behalf of the Thuringian Interior Minister Christian Köckert (CDU), the former Hessian State Secretary of Justice Karl Heinz Gasser (CDU) examined the administration of the then President of the Constitutional Protection, Helmut Roewer . Gasser noticed serious mistakes in personnel selection, structure and management, so that he described the realignment of the state office in the years 1994 to 1999 as a failure. The hiring of young college graduates as executives led to constant arguments between veteran intelligence officers and their new bosses. For example, a civil servant who criticized a decision made by his boss as nonsensical was soon obliged by Roewer to submit an hourly written report on his work. Technical supervision by the Ministry of the Interior was practically disabled for years, as Roewer insisted on only reporting to Köckert's predecessor Richard Dewes (SPD) without informing the responsible supervisory department about the content of the discussions. Even Dewe's successor Köckert did not react to the chaotic situation in Roewer's office despite a fire letter from the staff council. The report initially remained classified , but Roewer was suspended in the same year due to an embezzlement affair involving the front company Heron-Verlag. It was only when Roewer returned to public interest in the course of the NSU affair that the Gasser report made it into the media.

The Thuringian NSU investigation committee considers official sabotage in the exchange of information between the Thuringian constitutional protection and the LKA possible. V-people are said to have been warned of pending police searches in the right-wing scene.

Because of commercial gang fraud, there were several extensive house searches of former V-people of the Thuringian constitution protection in March 2012; Brandt is among the accused.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Constitutional Protection Report Free State of Thuringia 2006. (pdf) p. 9 , accessed on September 4, 2018 .
  2. ^ Constitutional Protection Report Free State of Thuringia 2007. (pdf) p. 8 , accessed on September 4, 2018 .
  3. ^ Constitutional Protection Report Free State of Thuringia 2008. (pdf) p. 13 , accessed on September 4, 2018 .
  4. ^ Constitutional Protection Report Free State of Thuringia 2009. (pdf) p. 9 , accessed on September 4, 2018 .
  5. ^ Constitutional Protection Report Free State of Thuringia 2010. (pdf) p. 9 , accessed on September 4, 2018 .
  6. ^ Constitutional Protection Report Free State of Thuringia 2011. (pdf) p. 8 , accessed on September 4, 2018 .
  7. Constitutional Protection Report Free State of Thuringia 2012. (pdf) p. 9 , accessed on September 4, 2018 .
  8. Constitutional Protection Report Free State of Thuringia 2013. (pdf) p. 9 , accessed on September 4, 2018 .
  9. Compare GVBl. 1992 p. 499 (digitized here ).
  10. Spiegel Online from July 10, 2012: Thuringian Neo-Nazi Committee: "From tomorrow I will be President here, you can go"
  11. mdr of July 11, 2012: Thuringian NSU Committee: First Constitutional Protection Chief Harm Winkler attacks the Ministry of the Interior
  12. Spiegel Online from July 3, 2012: NSU affair: Thuringian constitution protection chief must go
  13. TMIK organization chart
  14. a b Protection of the Constitution with a new "spirit". Thuringian Ministry of the Interior and Municipal Affairs, accessed on November 20, 2015 .
  15. ^ New head of the protection of the constitution in office. (No longer available online.) MDR.de, December 1, 2015, archived from the original on December 4, 2015 ; accessed on December 2, 2015 .
  16. Spiegel Online from February 1, 2013: Ex-Verfassungsschützer before NSU committee: King V-Mann ( Memento from February 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) ()
  17. mdr of December 5, 2012: Former NPD boss in Erfurt was an undercover agent ( Memento of December 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  18. Press Release TLFV from December 6, 2012
  19. ^ Haskala: Blood and Honor Thuringia: Marcel “Riese” Degner alias Source 2100
  20. MDR: The V-Mann Thomas Dienel ( Memento from April 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  21. ^ Profile of the DNP at apabiz
  22. Thüringische Landeszeitung: Ex-V-Mann Dienel: I was warned about police actions
  23. Thüringer Allgemeine: The protection of the constitution is said to have actively influenced informants
  24. Mirror Edition 51/1992 of 14 December 1992: Right-wing: The Home Secretary wants to withdraw two neo-Nazis fundamental rights. They're playing the martyrs now.
  25. Die Welt of July 31, 1996: Right-wing extremists keep basic rights: Constitutional judges reject the federal government's motion - "Both are no longer a danger"
  26. The Manfred Reich V-Mann case (interview with Rolf Gössner )
  27. Thuringia abolishes informants. ( Memento from March 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: Frankfurter Rundschau , March 20, 2015.
  28. Protection of the Constitution: Thuringia sticks to V-people. In: Spiegel Online , April 3, 2015.
  29. Website of the Bavarian State Parliament of October 9, 2012: NSU investigative committee starts with the hearing of witnesses ( archive ( memento of December 30, 2012 on WebCite ))
  30. ^ Tanjev Schultz: NSU. The terror from the right and the failure of the state. Droemer Knaur, Munich 2018, Chapter 3, pp. 133, 150–161, 164–167, 179 f.
  31. ^ Gasser report: Roewer went in and out of Dewes. In: Thüringische Landeszeitung , June 6, 2012.
  32. ^ Final report on the NSU: Committee of Inquiry also considers the authorities' intention to be possible. In: MDR Thuringia , August 16, 2014; Tanjev Schultz: NSU , Munich 2018, pp. 157–159.
  33. ^ Investigations into fraud in the far-right milieu: raid on former informants. In: Spiegel Online , March 28, 2012.

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 '55.5 "  N , 11 ° 5' 6.8"  E