Corelli (V-man)

Thomas Richter (born October 24, 1974 in Morl ; † between April 4 and 7 , 2014 in Paderborn ) was a German right-wing extremist activist working for the neo-Nazi terror group National Socialist Underground (NSU). As Corelli , he served the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) from 1994 to 2003 and 2005 to 2012 as an undercover agent and became the nationwide “top source” of the right-wing extremist scene through frequent trips, observation of demonstrations, Internet offers and mail order. After his exposure in 2012, Richter lived under a new identity. In the course of the investigation into the NSU complex, Richter's role remained unclear, among other things because security authorities withheld information from the NSU investigative committees and the actors in the NSU trial . He allegedly died in April 2014 of undetected natural diabetes , even if external influences (poisoning) could not be ruled out at first.

Development to V-Person

Richter grew up in Morl. He attended high school there and left it in 1988/1989 without a degree. Subsequently, he found a job at a leather goods dealer traveling through Germany.

At the age of 16, he was introduced to a right-wing extremist environment in Halle by his three older brothers, all of whom were right-wing extremists, and thus socialized. From 1992 Richter was a member of the Nationalist Front , which was banned on November 27, 1992. After all the facilities of his sponsor Meinolf Schönborn , a supporter of the Reich Citizens Movement , for whom he worked from 1993, were destroyed at a celebration in 1995, he offered himself to the police as an undercover agent in order to be able to pay for the damage. It was later passed on to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. His wish to get out of the neo-Nazi milieu was not granted because he was an important source of information.

activities

Richter's nickname in the mid-1990s was "HJ Tommy"; However, he claimed in an interrogation in the NSU proceedings in 2013 that this did not mean the Hitler Youth , but HJ stood for “Hallescher Junge”. He was active in the neo-Nazi scene in Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony and was networked nationwide in particular through his Internet activities and frequent trips. At the turn of the millennium, Richter was considered one of the leading figures in the neo-Nazi scene in Saxony-Anhalt ( Der Spiegel ). A confidential report by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) on right-wing extremist comradeships described him as the "namesake and initiator" of the Halle National Resistance . Richter was editor of the newspaper Nationaler Observer and ran numerous websites with right-wing extremist agitation. He founded a right-wing extremist music distributor and through this was in close contact with the Blood & Honor movement.

From February 1994 to November 2012 Richter spied (with an interruption from 2003 to 2005) as an undercover agent for the BfV in Cologne and provided information that filled a total of 180 files (a rich source of the protection of the constitution usually comes to 10 to 20 files of information ). The frequency and intensity of information increased from 1999 and especially from 2005 with more than 1000 files annually, so that the BfV was often unable to keep up with the evaluation of these reports. The special investigator of the parliamentary control committee of the Bundestag , the Green politician Jerzy Montag , who was appointed after Richter's death, assesses the Corellis reports as "honest news".

Thomas Richter's role and significance in the personal network surrounding the terrorist group NSU is still unclear. There was at least one meeting between Richter and Uwe Mundlos , one of the later NSU members, in February 1995, when both were doing their basic military service in Thuringia. Richter then reported to the BfV about Mundlos and that they and other people in Jena had founded an anti-antifa group, the “Kameradschaft Jena” (see neo-Nazism in Jena ) (from which the NSU later recruited). When the garage of the later NSU trio in Jena, which was used as a bomb workshop, was excavated by the police in January 1998 ( garage search ), an address and telephone list created by Mundlos with nationwide contact details for right-wing extremist activists, including two telephone numbers for Thomas Richter, was discovered. However, these were no longer up-to-date in 1998, which is why it is unclear whether further contact had existed since then. It is also unclear how close Richter's contact was with supporters and confidants of the NSU trio. From 2005, Richter reported extensively on Holger Gerlach , who is accused as one of the NSU's identity givers ( Uwe Böhnhardt had taken Gerlach's passport and nickname) as an assistant in the NSU trial . Richter described Gerlach only as a casual acquaintance, as did Thorsten Heise, another NSU confidante, about whose activities Richter informed the BfV extensively from 2001 onwards. Other people in the NSU environment such as Tino Brandt , André Kapke and Jan Werner knew Richter - so far known - only through mutual acquaintances. He was also in contact with the right-wing extremist music group Gigi and the brown town musicians , who glorified the Ceska murder series of migrants in their 2010 song Dönerkiller , and made server space available to the neo-Nazi fanzine Der Weisse Wolf , to which the NSU had made a donation in 2002 and thereupon was mentioned in the magazine with praise ("Many thanks to the NSU, it has borne fruit ;-) The fight continues ...").

Richter came in 1999 into contact with the Baden-Wuerttemberg NPD -member, musicians and concert organizers Achim Schmid , of the group in 2000 European White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan founded (EER KKK), an offshoot of racist secret society Ku Klux Klan from the United States . Richter, who, according to Jerzy Montag's report, did not want to have anything to do with the group personally, let the BfV approach the EWK KKK. He was accepted as a candidate in July 2000 and later became a full member. As Kleagle responsible for recruiting further members, he traveled to the USA at the expense of the BfV and regularly took part in meetings in the Schwäbisch Hall / Heilbronn area. In particular, he reported on participating police officers until the group disbanded in late 2002 / early 2003. This information was in turn relevant for the NSU investigation because one of the participants at the time was the group leader of the police officer Michele Kiesewetter when she was allegedly shot by Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt on April 25, 2007 ( police murder in Heilbronn ).

In 2005, handed judge his superior at BfV a CD entitled NSU / NSDAP , whose cover also the image of the hands of the leader , a Wolfsangel (symbol of the werewolf irregulars from the end time of the Second World War ) and a Glock pistol with Laser aiming device can be seen.

During his V-Mann work, Richter always committed legal violations. During a house search, the combat script The way forward was also found. It advocates a cell-like militant organization that is supposed to carry out attacks on migrants. Because Richter continued to sell right-wing extremist music through his mail order business despite his promises and thus received income bypassing the BfV, the authority ended his undercover activity in September 2003, but resumed it in June 2005. In the meantime, his undercover agent had not let go of contact. The BfV paid Richter for cars, his debts and final bonuses, as well as thousands of euros for "accommodation by friends abroad" and "the cost of language training abroad". He received special bonuses after his extensive IT system was confiscated by the police. The protection of the constitution financed the new purchase. Richter received a total of 296,843 euros from the BfV.

Richter last worked as a leather goods dealer.

Exposure and death

In a press conference on September 17, 2012, the Minister of the Interior of Saxony-Anhalt , Holger Stahlknecht ( CDU ), made the unfounded claim that politicians on the left had established a connection between “Corelli” and Thomas Richter through “indiscretions” and thus the V- Man put life in danger; After this press conference an article appeared in the Magdeburger Volksstimme in which "Thomas R." is referred to as an undercover agent for the first time. Richter was in the witness protection program of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from that time . Equipped with a new identity (Thomas Dellig), he last lived in an apartment in the area of Schloß Holte-Stukenbrock .

In early April 2014 Richter died unexpectedly at the age of 39. After arranging a meeting with him on April 3, 2014, his landlord found him dead in his apartment in Paderborn on April 7, 2014. The landlord broke open the door at the instigation of two constitutional protection officers. The first guess as to the cause of death was undetected diabetes , the public prosecutor said. On April 4, the query “Where to go with stomach ache?” Was entered in the Google search program in Richter's apartment. According to the Frankfurter Rundschau, in April 2014 the death certificate issued by the emergency doctor in the name of Dellig was rewritten by the police and a new, backdated burial certificate was issued.

The judge's death also raised questions in the Bundestag's interior committee . The committee summoned the chief public prosecutor from Paderborn, to whom Minister Kutschaty granted permission to testify. When the MPs demanded insight into the toxicological reports from the investigation files, the chief public prosecutor blocked himself.

On June 2, 2016, the diabetologist Werner A. Scherbaum testified in the NSU investigation committee of the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament . His autopsy result from 2014, according to which Richter clearly died of a "comatose sugar shock ", he put into perspective. He was not aware of the scope of the case. He had found out more and had come across two substances ( Alloxan and Vacor , a rat poison), the incorporation of which could produce the same symptoms as a sugar shock. The committee of inquiry was subsequently re-toxicological investigation of asservierten body parts judge in order. On June 21, 2016, the Paderborn public prosecutor's office resumed Corelli's death investigation. Several toxicological reports provided further evidence of naturally occurring diabetes, whereupon the public prosecutor dropped the case in March 2017. According to Tanjev Schultz , the investigation showed that third-party debt could be ruled out.

Incomplete processing

In 2005, Thomas Richter gave his source guide at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution a DVD with right-wing extremist material and a file with the title "NSDAP / NSU". According to a report by Bild at the Federal Office, nobody could do anything with the abbreviation “NSU” when they were first evaluated at the time . This CD was withheld from the first NSU investigative committee in the Bundestag and did not appear in the archives of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution until a few months after the judge's death. At this point there were a number of uncoordinated government investigations; The BfV experts came to different assessments than those of the LfV Hamburg . In October 2014 the Parliamentary Control Committee appointed former Green MP Jerzy Montag as a special investigator to investigate the NSU case .

At the beginning of 2014, a contact at the Hamburg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution had already handed in another DVD entitled "NSU / NSDAP", in the production of which Thomas Richter was apparently involved. The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution sees evidence that Richter sent the CD in 2006 to the Hamburg contact. It contained 15,000 racist and anti-Semitic texts and images. In the accompanying text it was referred to as the "first extensive image data CD of the National Socialist Underground of the NSDAP (NSU)".

On behalf of the parliamentary control body of the Bundestag examined the case from Monday to May 2015. WDR , NDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung were able to view the 300-page report and published details. The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen , filed a criminal complaint for the disclosure of confidential information. According to Montag, Corelli was a top source for the BfV, especially “quantitatively”. Montag was appalled that, given the mass of information Corelli provided, little was evaluated by the BfV.

At the end of May 2016, German and Dutch prepaid cards from Corelli appeared at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Cologne, which had not been evaluated for a reference to the NSU and had never been presented to the special investigator. Shortly afterwards, the special investigator was reinstated and in June 2016 other unevaluated or incorrectly evaluated cell phones were found.

The author Tanjev Schultz speaks of a failure of the state in connection with the years of official inactivity .

literature

• Tanjev Schultz : NSU. The terror from the right and the failure of the state. Droemer, Munich 2018, pp. 168–173, 350–352, 441.

Web links

• Jerzy Montag : Report ... to Corelli. German Bundestag , briefing by the Parliamentary Control Committee, BT-Drs. 18/6545 , November 4, 2015.
• State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia , printed matter 16/14400: Report of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry III (NSU). March 27, 2017, Chapter D: Thomas Richter alias VP "Corelli" in North Rhine-Westphalia , pp. 569–603 (PDF) .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Lena Kampf: Report on the undercover agent "Corelli". The failure of the protection of the constitution. In: Tagesschau.de , May 20, 2015.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Stuttgarter Nachrichten, edition: Stuttgart / Zeitgeschehen from November 27, 2015, p. 4
3. ↑ mdr.de: Birthday with 200 neo-Nazis - Who was this undercover agent "Corelli"? | MDR.DE. Archived from the original on June 25, 2016 ; accessed on June 25, 2016 (German). 
4. ↑ Landtag North Rhine-Westphalia, printed matter 16/14400: Report of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry III (NSU). March 27, 2017, p. 570 (PDF) .
5. ^ Tanjev Schultz: NSU. The terror from the right and the failure of the state. P. 350.
6. ↑ Jerzy Montag : Report ... to Corelli. German Bundestag , briefing by the Parliamentary Control Committee, BT-Drs. 18/6545 , p. 5 f., November 4, 2015.
7. ↑ Landtag North Rhine-Westphalia, printed matter 16/14400: Report of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry III (NSU). March 27, 2017, p. 572 (PDF) .
8. ↑ Jerzy Montag : Report ... to Corelli. German Bundestag , briefing by the Parliamentary Control Committee, BT-Drs. 18/6545 , p. 7, November 4, 2015.
9. ↑ For the entire paragraph see Landtag North Rhine-Westphalia, printed matter 16/14400: Report of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry III (NSU). March 27, 2017, pp. 572-578 (PDF) .
10. ↑ Jerzy Montag : Report ... to Corelli. German Bundestag , briefing by the Parliamentary Control Committee, BT-Drs. 18/6545 , pp. 10-12, November 4, 2015.
11. ↑ Landtag North Rhine-Westphalia, printed matter 16/14400: Report of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry III (NSU). March 27, 2017, p. 572 (PDF) .
12. ↑ Hendrik Kranert-Rydzy: "Corelli": V-Mann with connection to the NSU In: Frankfurter Rundschau , June 23, 2015.
13. ^ Tanjev Schultz: NSU. The terror from the right and the failure of the state. P. 170.
14. ↑ Anja Krüger: Right-wing extremist undercover agent "Corelli": A very natural death. In: Die Tageszeitung , February 26, 2015.
15. ↑ Stefan Aust, Helmar Büchel, Dirk Laabs: Did V-Mann "Corelli" die from rat poison? In: Die Welt , June 8, 2016.
16. ↑ Investigations into the death of undercover agent "Corelli" stopped. In: Die Welt , March 15, 2017 (with a link to the press release of the Paderborn public prosecutor's office). See in detail the investigation of the corpse of the judge's state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia , printed matter 16/14400: Report of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry III (NSU) March 27, 2017 (PDF) , pp. 586 and 601 f. Accordingly, the aqueous humor and the cerebral chamber water were examined in 2014, then the pancreas, liver and kidney tissue and the tablets taken by Richter in 2016. In addition, the meeting on December 9, 2016 - summary. In: NSU-Watch NRW , December 11, 2016.
17. ↑ Tanjev Schultz: NSU , Munich 2018, p. 169.
18. ↑ Jerzy Montag : Report ... to Corelli. German Bundestag , briefing by the Parliamentary Control Committee, BT-Drs. 18/6545 , pp. 10-12, November 4, 2015.
19. ^ "Corelli" referred to the protection of the Constitution on the abbreviation NSU. In: Publikative.org , October 1, 2014; Antonia von der Behrens: The NSU network. In this. (Ed.): No closing words. Hamburg 2018, pp. 197–322, here p. 284 f.
20. ^ Rolf Clement: Passing on confidential information. In: Deutschlandfunk , July 4, 2015.
21. ↑ tagesschau.de: NSU scandal: Again new information in the "Corelli" case. In: tagesschau.de. Retrieved on May 31, 2016 (German). 
22. ↑ tagesschau.de: Resignation demands: How tight is it now for Maaßen? In: tagesschau.de. June 23, 2016. Retrieved June 23, 2016 . 
23. ^ Tanjev Schultz: NSU. The terror from the right and the failure of the state. P. 441.