Nail bomb attack in Cologne

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Keupstrasse (2007)
The Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu visits the site of the attack (2011).

During the nail bomb attack in Cologne on June 9, 2004 , a remote-controlled nail bomb detonated in Cologne-Mülheimer Keupstrasse , which is known as the center of Turkish business life . 22 people were injured, four of them seriously. The hairdressing salon in front of which the bomb exploded was devastated by the explosion and a fire, several other shops and numerous parked cars were severely damaged by the explosion and flying nails. Since the self-exposure in November 2011, the attack has been assigned to the right-wing terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU). In the NSU trial , the xenophobic motivation was established, while the investigations up to 2011 mainly suspected residents and victims.

Sequence of events

The bomb consisted of a butane gas cylinder , 26 centimeters high and 20 centimeters in diameter, which was filled with about 5.5 kilograms of black powder and about 800 carpenter nails ten centimeters long and weighed a total of 18 kilograms. It had been placed in a hard-shell suitcase filled with cotton wool with a set of batteries, mounted on the luggage rack of a bicycle and this was parked in front of the barber shop Kuaför Özcan . It was ignited at 3:58 pm by a filament with the radio remote control of an airplane model kit , so the perpetrators were in the vicinity of the crime scene. They set off the bomb just as two southern-looking young men were walking past the bicycle.

Investigations and Independent Observations

The first successes of the investigation were made by a surveillance camera . This was attached to the Viva TV station around the corner and had filmed a man who was walking past the headquarters on a bicycle shortly before the attack. Witnesses confirmed that it was the man who had parked the bike on Keupstrasse. The picture showed a man about 30 years old, presumably of Central European origin, with a baseball cap pulled low over his face. He couldn't be identified. However, in June 2005, after the murder of İsmail Yaşar, the fifth victim of the NSU series of murders , phantom images of suspects were made in Nuremberg and the resemblance of a man to the local image was established. Another common feature was the use of bicycles.

Clemens Binninger , CDU chairman in the first NSU investigative committee in the Bundestag , described it as "almost scandalous" that two police officers who were on patrol in the immediate vicinity of the attack were only questioned nine years later.

In July 2013, lawyer Yavuz Selim Narin, who had the family of Theodoros Boulgarides killed in 2005 in the trial against Beate Zschäpe u. a. represents the following with: Several video recordings show Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt placing the nail bomb in Cologne's Keupstrasse in 2004. But the video material was only partially observed, it must be viewed in its entirety . While looking for hours, Narin discovered the complete video recordings at the Federal Criminal Police Office. There in the files there is significantly more footage from surveillance cameras of the music station than the one previously reported sequence of a single man pushing a wheel. After Narin, perpetrators' activities on June 9th are said to be shown on six video cassettes, and on seven hard drives. Narin criticizes that the image material was not fully evaluated until 2013. In total, Mundlos and Böhnhardt were recorded five times that day by two different cameras on the station. A video even shows the perpetrators' approach in detail: the two can be seen in the recordings from 2:18 p.m. At 3:10 p.m., Mundlos passed the entrance of Viva towards Keupstraße, pushing a ladies bike. There is a hard case on the luggage rack in which the nail bomb is located. This is the previously known picture. Mundlos parked this bicycle in front of the Özcan hairdressing salon. Before that, Böhnhardt can be seen pushing two mountain bikes through the street; it is the bicycles with which both men go away after the bomb is detonated. At around 3:50 p.m., both perpetrators and their bikes can be seen on the street again. Six minutes later they detonated the bomb, which was equipped with at least 5.5 kilograms of black powder and over 700 carpenter nails, by remote control. At 3:57 p.m. one of the two can be seen again. He passes the entrance of the Viva music station and then drives away quickly.

backgrounds

There were numerous suspicions about the motive - speculations were made about an act of revenge, a dispute in the drug or red light district , extortion of protection money or an attack by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - but these were soon rejected. However, a few days after the attack there was an expertise of the Department of Legal terrorism in Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which parallels between the Combat 18 attributed bombings in London in 1999 and the attack has drawn in the Keupstraße. However, this investigation path was not pursued any further. Federal Minister of the Interior Otto Schily said at a press conference with his French counterpart Dominique de Villepin in Kehl : “The findings that our security authorities have gained so far do not indicate a terrorist background, but rather a criminal milieu, but the investigations are not yet over, so I now can not make a final assessment of these events. " in addition, the investigating authorities in their public relations tried to establish that no xenophobic motivation was and that it was not to be a terrorist act from the environment of Islamic terrorism had acted. Residents and those affected suspected right-wing extremist motives behind the crime , but this was dismissed as assumption and speculation.

In November 2011, the attack could be attributed to the right-wing extremist terror group " National Socialist Underground " through a confessional video allegedly sent by Beate Zschäpe .

On the day of the nail bomb attack, Andreas Temme , the official of the Hessian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, who was present at the scene of the NSU murder of Halit Yozgat in Kassel in April 2006 , was in Cologne to attend a conference.

Legal processing

Only after the right-wing terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) had exposed itself in November 2011 and its member Beate Zschäpe sent out videos to confess it , in which the NSU acknowledged the crimes, the right-wing extremist and xenophobic background to the crime became known. In November 2011, the Attorney General at the Federal Court of Justice took over the investigation and had the Federal Criminal Police Office clear up the circumstances of this attack. In the following NSU trial , Zschäpe was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2018 as an accomplice in the nail bomb attack. The 22 victims of the attack joined the prosecution as joint prosecutors . The victims and their relatives were disappointed with the verdict, in which four NSU supporters were sentenced to early prison terms, but the work of the authorities and possible local attack workers were not discussed.

One of these co-plaintiffs did not even exist, but was faked by a lawyer with the help of forged documents, which is said to have stolen a total of more than 200,000 euros, including 5000 euros in lump sum hardship from the Federal Office of Justice . He must therefore answer before the Aachen Regional Court .

Commemoration

Visits to the crime scene by politicians

Rallies and pictures

In November 2013, a rally took place in Berlin under the motto “NSU Terror: State and Nazis Hand in Hand”, at which the police confiscated the loudspeaker system and initiated proceedings for “denigrating the state”. However, the proceedings were dropped by the prosecutor's office and a court found the seizure to be unlawful. On June 3, 2014, the same department had the same police unit remove the sentence "NSU: State & Nazis Hand in Hand" from a several meter high poster for the NSU bomb attack on a house in Manteuffelstrasse. Police officers again filed charges of denigrating the state . A week later, the public prosecutor assessed the controversial statement as a permissible expression of opinion in the context of the findings on the NSU complex, which was covered by freedom of expression .

Commemorative festival Birligte

From June 7th to 9th, 2014, the Birligte memorial festival - standing together took place in Cologne with around 70,000 visitors. Wilma Elles , Hardy Krüger , Udo Lindenberg , Die Fantastischen Vier , BAP , Aynur , Bläck Fööss , Brings , Carolin Kebekus , Eko Fresh , Peter Maffay , Sertab Erener and Demir Demirkan performed at the festival . Sandra Maischberger took over the moderation.

Federal President Joachim Gauck and Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas visited the festival on June 9, 2014. Gauck also visited the scene of the attack, the hairdressing salon Kuaför Özcan , and later spoke to twelve victims . At the closing rally, Gauck spoke to 70,000 visitors. He also described his encounters with NSU victims and their relatives. During a panel discussion at the festival, Maas said: "I am ashamed that the German state has not managed to ensure that innocent citizens are better protected over so many years."

The festival took place again in 2015 and 2016.

monument

In order to commemorate the victims of the attack, the decision was made to erect a memorial to commemorate both NSU bomb attacks in Cologne, i.e. the one in 2001 in Probsteigasse and the one in 2004 in Keupstraße. After a competition, Ulf Aminde's monument design was selected in November 2016 , a “virtual house” near Keupstrasse serving as an encounter. In June 2018, the organizers of the Favoriten Festival reported that the project was not progressing because investor interests had become priority on the planned property.

Filmography

literature

  • Dostluk Sinemasi: From the fall of the wall to the nail bomb - the NSU attack on Cologne's Keupstrasse in the context of the pogroms and attacks of the 1990s. Amadeu Antonio Foundation, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-940878-16-8 .
  • State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia , 16th electoral period, printed matter 16/14400: Final report of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry III , March 27, 2017, Chapter B.II: “Nail bomb attack in Keupstrasse in Cologne”, pp. 329–416 (PDF) .
  • Antonia von der Behrens (ed.): No closing words. Nazi Terror - Security Authorities - Support Network. Pleading in the NSU trial. VSA, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-89965-792-0 , in it the pleadings on Keupstrasse pp. 139-184 (Alexander Hoffmann, Arif S., Stephan Kuhn, Berthold Fresenius, Muhammet Ayazgün).
  • Tanjev Schultz : NSU. The terror from the right and the failure of the state. Droemer, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-426-27628-0 , chapter "Bomb terror in Cologne and Nuremberg: The state sleeps", pp. 226–245, 253–263.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Elizabeta Jonuz , Erika Schulze: Diversity as a motor of urban developments. The example of Keupstrasse in Cologne. In: Wolf-Dietrich Bukow, Gerda Heck, Erika Schulze, Erol Yildiz (eds.): New diversity in urban society. 2009, p. 36 .
  2. Detonator from the model kit. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , June 15, 2004; Tanjev Schultz : NSU. The terror from the right and the failure of the state. Droemer Knaur, Munich 2018, p. 226 f .; Pleading by Annette Greger in the NSU trial , in: Pleading by the Federal Prosecutor's Office 3rd day: complete transcript. In: NSU-Nebenklage.de , July 27, 2017; Judgment in the NSU trial, in: Annette Ramelsberger and others: The NSU trial. The protocol. Volume 4: Pleadings and Judgment. Antje Kunstmann, Munich 2018, p. 1838.
  3. So that it all makes sense. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 8, 2015, p. 55.
  4. Seven dead, one weapon - the murderer's trail. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , June 23, 2005.
  5. wdr.de April 25, 2013: Further breakdowns after the NSU attack.
  6. Pictures that nobody wanted to see. In: Die Tageszeitung , July 24, 2013.
  7. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: Was it an act of revenge, a dispute in the drug milieu or the act of a confused individual perpetrator? , Article dated June 12, 2004
  8. Heike Kleffner : "Generation Terror" - The NSU and the racist violence of the 1990s in NRW. In: Dostluk Sinemasi: From the fall of the wall to the nail bomb. The NSU attack on Keupstrasse in Cologne in the context of the pogroms and attacks of the 1990s , Amadeu Antonio Foundation, Berlin 2014, p. 33.
  9. https://www.justiz.bayern.de/gerichte-und-behoerden/landgericht/muenchen-1/presse/2017/02.php
  10. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: Poking in the fog , article from July 30, 2004
  11. Peter Schilder: No evidence of a terrorist background. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 10, 2004.
  12. Pitt von Bebenburg: NSU committee: "All theories open". In: Frankfurter Rundschau , July 3, 2016.
  13. Uli Kreibaum: The words are used up. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , July 11, 2018.
  14. https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/nrw-region/process-eschweiler-anwalt-soll-nsu-opfer-erfunden-haben_aid-52595551
  15. https://www.ksta.de/keupstrasse-gabriel-sprech-von-demuetigung-10545982
  16. https://www.ksta.de/keupstrasse-ein-aussenminister-im-friseursalon-11851896
  17. https://www.newsdeutschland.com/video/20170311/44113/Kilics-privater-Köln-Besuch-DW-Nachrichten.htm
  18. Police censor NSU posters for denigrating the state. In: MiGAZIN , June 4, 2014.
  19. https://umbruch-bildarchiv.de/bildarchiv/ereignis/030614wandbild_keupstrasse.html
  20. Trouble about the mural for the NSU bomb attack. In: Zeit Online , Störungsmelder, June 3, 2014.
  21. NSU defeat for the police: State & Nazis hand in hand does not denigrate the state. In: Glokal.org.
  22. Birligte 2015: Birligte 2015: Shorter, but with just as much program . January 29, 2015. Retrieved February 15, 2015.
  23. Birlicts! Cologne stands together, picture, article from June 11, 2014
  24. Gauck meets victims of the NSU attack - the different together. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 10, 2014.
  25. Helmut Frangenberg: NSU Terror: This is how the memorial for the victims from Keupstrasse should look. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , November 7, 2016.
  26. Ulf Aminde and Tribunal "Dissolve NSU Complex". In: Favorite Festival .
  27. Official trailer on YouTube

Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 55.8 ″  N , 7 ° 0 ′ 34.7 ″  E