Carsten Szczepanski

Carsten Szczepanski (* 1970 in Berlin-Neukölln ) is a former German neo-Nazi who later acted as an undercover agent for the protection of the constitution . Among other things, he was an NPD functionary and tried to establish the Ku Klux Klan in Germany in the 1990s . In the early 1990s he was considered "one of the most dangerous neo-Nazis in Brandenburg".

Life

Carsten Szczepanski grew up in West Berlin and moved to Königs Wusterhausen in Brandenburg after reunification . From a young age he belonged to the right-wing extremist scene. In the early 1990s he made contacts with the Ku Klux Klan from the United States . Among other things, he corresponded with Dennis Mahon from Oklahoma . He himself was a member of a clan offshoot in Kansas City and received the rank of "Grand Dragon". At the end of December 1991 he carried out a cross-burn with Mahon in Halbe , at which a team from RTL Plus was also present. He also issued merchandise from the Ku Klux Klan. At the beginning of 1991 he brought the KKK fanzine "Das Feuerkreuz" onto the market. The booklet essentially contained propaganda material of the Ku Klux Klan from its magazine “White Beret”, either translated or left in the original English language. The magazine was published with the subtitle “White Survival Now” and had two issues that are still distributed in the right-wing extremist scene, including as a PDF document. A third edition was also planned, with calls for armed struggle and instructions on militant actions and bomb-making. This did not happen, however, because at the end of 1991 there was a raid on Szczepanski's apartment. Four pipe bombs were also found in an apartment he rented . Nevertheless, the neo-Nazi remained at large.

In October 1993 he was convicted of property damage when he set fire to a VW bus belonging to the left-wing youth organization Socialist Youth Germany - Die Falken . However, an incident on May 8, 1992 put him in prison for an extended period of time. On May 8, 1992, he and a group of ten neo-Nazis and skinheads beat up a teacher from Nigeria who only barely survived the attempted murder and was then in a coma for days. He was sentenced in February 1995 to eight years in prison for attempted murder. While still in custody , he was recruited by the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution and, since July 1994, has been an undercover agent "Piatto". Already in April 1998 he was outdoors .

In addition to his intelligence services for the authority, he was still a high-ranking neo-Nazi. He ran a shop for right-wing music , played a leading role in setting up the right-wing international network Blood & Honor and belonged to the National Revolutionary Cells . Between 1992 and 1999 he published several issues of a fanzine under the title "United Skins", which was intended to appeal to the right-wing skinhead scene and was considered the German arm of the right-wing terrorist organization Combat 18 . Some issues even appeared during his detention. He also joined the NPD at the request of the authorities . There he became local chairman, assessor in the state board of Brandenburg and head of the security service. In the summer of 2000 he was exposed as an undercover agent and has since lived in hiding under a new name in Germany.

In 1998, Szczepanski had contact with the closest circle of the right-wing extremist terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU). Their core trio, Uwe Mundlos , Beate Zschäpe and Uwe Böhnhardt , escaped prosecution from their hometown Jena by going underground to Chemnitz at the end of January 1998 . They apparently acquired the logistics in the course of 1998 in order to commit their robberies, bomb attacks and serial murders from 1999 onwards. In Chemnitz, they were supported in particular by the right-wing extremist mail order company Jan Werner, who had contact with Szczepanski in 1998 about the NSU trio. After the NSU trio, which had previously been in hiding, was exposed in November 2011, Szczepanski played a role in the investigation against the NSU. On August 25, 1998, he had received a text message from Jan Werner, in which the latter indicated that the NSU trio was trying to obtain weapons ("Hello. What about the bang?"). Between August and October 1998, Szczepanski reported five times to the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution about his contact with Jan Werner; He let it be known that the Saxon section of the violent Blood & Honor supports the (NSU) trio, Jan Werner should equip the trio with weapons and that money is available from Blood & Honor funds (concerts and CD sales). With a proper evaluation by the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution, this would have created an opportunity to track down and crush the terrorist group before it became active. One of his two undercover agents at the time was the current President of the Saxon State Office for the Protection of the Constitution , Gordian Meyer-Plath . Szczepanski testified as a witness in the Munich NSU trial on December 3, 2014 and January 13, 2015, when he entered the courtroom masked and stated that he did not remember anything on the essential questions (Szczepanski should not be confused with co-defendant Carsten Schultze The only direct connection to the NSU trio is a note from Zschäpe that one of Szczepanski's ex-girlfriends wrote on a list of names for potential right-wing women.

In January 2018, as part of the work of the NSU investigation committee in the Brandenburg state parliament, there were indications that Szczepanski had already worked for the protection of the constitution from February 1992 - and thus before the life-threatening attack - possibly in addition to the Brandenburg state office also for the federal office for Protection of the Constitution . In 2015, several Brandenburg public prosecutors destroyed several investigation files on Szczepanski that were still available to the first NSU committee in the Bundestag before the Brandenburg investigative committee was established in 2016.

Web links

• V-man portrait: Carsten Szczepanski. In: NSU-Watch , February 23, 2015.
• Articles on Carsten Szczepanski at NSU-Nebenklage.de.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Brown informers we know. the daily newspaper , November 22, 2011, accessed on April 25, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Nina Juliane Rink: Instructions for "racial hatred" . In: The Right Edge . No. 159 , 2016, p. 18/19 .
3. ^ Ku Klux Klan: Offshoot in Germany . In: Antifascist information sheet . No. 97 , 2012 ( antifainfoblatt.de ).
4. ^ ^{A b} René Heilig: V-man portrait: Carsten Szczepanski . In: The Right Edge . No. 150 ( nsu-watch.info ).
5. ↑ Michael Weis: Accompanying music to murder and manslaughter . In: Searchlight, Antifaschistisches Infoblatt, Enough is Enough, rat (Ed.): White Noise. Right-wing rock, skinhead music, blood & honor - insights into the international neo-Nazi music scene . series of anti-fascist texts (council) / Unrast Verlag, Hamburg / Münster 2000, ISBN 3-89771-807-3 , p. 76 f .
6. ^ Michael Weiss: Germany in September . In: Christian Dornbusch , Jan Raabe (Hrsg.): Rechtsrock - Inventory and counter-strategies . series of anti-fascist texts (council) / Unrast-Verlag, Hamburg / Münster 2002, ISBN 3-89771-808-1 , p. 480 .
7. ↑ apabiz.eV: Directory of German-speaking RechtsRock-Fanzines . In: Christian Dornbusch , Jan Raabe (Ed.): RechtsRock. Inventories and counter-strategies . Unrast Verlag, Münster 2002, ISBN 3-89771-808-1 , p. 477 .
8. ^ German Bundestag, final report of the NSU I investigative committee, BT-Drs. 17/14600 , pp. 401-410; Final report of the investigation committee NSU II, BT-Drs. 18/12950 , p. 1169 f.
9. ^ Tanjev Schultz : NSU trial in Munich: Witness “Piatto” does not want to remember. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 3, 2014; NSU secondary action : Declaration on the hearing of the witness Carsten Szczepanski on December 3, 2014 and January 13, 2015 (PDF) .
10. ↑ Dominik Lenz: The invisible hand on Carsten Szczepanski.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Inforadio , February 23, 2018.  
11. ^ Thorsten Metzner: NSU in Brandenburg: The "Piatto" case turns into a judicial scandal. In: Potsdam Latest News , January 12, 2018; "A spy since 1992". In: NSU-Watch Brandenburg , January 12, 2018 (conversation with Christoph Kliesing).
12. ^ German Bundestag, final report of the NSU II investigative committee, BT-Drs. 18/12950 , p. 114 f.