Explosives attack in Düsseldorf

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Ackerstraße access to Düsseldorf Wehrhahn train station

During the bomb attack in Düsseldorf , also known as the Wehrhahn attack , on July 27, 2000, a pipe bomb filled with TNT exploded at Düsseldorf Wehrhahn train station . Ten people were injured, some of them life-threateningly, and a woman who was five months pregnant lost her unborn child.

The investigation did not lead to any result for a long time. Since the victims were migrants from Russia , Ukraine , Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan and six of them were members of regional Jewish communities , racist or anti-Semitic motives were suspected shortly after the crime . After more than 16 years, a suspect with a right-wing extremist background was arrested on January 31, 2017 . In January 2018, the trial of twelve alleged attempted murder was opened against him, but he was acquitted in July 2018.

Sequence of events

The ten people had attended a language course at a nearby school that day and were on their way home as a group. As they stepped onto a pedestrian ramp at the Ackerstraße station entrance, the bomb hidden in a plastic bag exploded right next to them. Some of them were critically injured by the flying fragments, and they were rescued through emergency operations. One woman lost her unborn child in the act.

Reactions

A few weeks after the attack, two Arabs carried out another attack on the Düsseldorf synagogue . Under the impression of this and the Wehrhahn attack, the then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder proclaimed an " uprising of the decent " against xenophobic violence on October 4, 2000, and on November 8, the federal government decided to initiate proceedings against the NPD at the Federal Constitutional Court . Migration researcher Bernd Kasparek describes this as a “sharp contrast” to the politics of the 1990s, since, according to him, “racist violence and neo-Nazi organization were first problematized by the government”. This (inconsistent) realignment of politics led, among other things, to the first NPD ban proceedings.

Investigations

At first it was assumed that there had been an exploded hand grenade , later a self-made pipe bomb filled with TNT was found to be an explosive device. An investigative commission Ackerstrasse, some of which comprised 70 police officers, was entrusted with the case . Traces of the Düsseldorf neo-Nazi scene , the Russian mafia and Islamist terrorism were unsuccessfully followed, with most of the evidence pointing “towards the right”. In July 2009, the investigation was unsuccessful.

After the right-wing terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) was uncovered in November 2011 , a connection was suspected on the basis of its confession video - as with the nail bomb attack in Cologne - and investigations by the Federal Criminal Police Office were started. New evaluations of the traces showed, unlike in the Cologne case, no connection to the NSU. In the summer of 2014, the investigation was intensified again after a testimony in which a fellow inmate reported a confession by the former neo-Nazi and militaria dealer Ralf S. As a result, the previous information, statements and pieces of evidence were re-evaluated and intensively investigated, which resulted in further evidence against S.

Arrest, prosecution and acquittal of a suspect

Ralf S. was on 31 January 2017 custody taken on suspicion carried out the attack, which would inter alia, attempted murder of committing racially motivated in twelve cases. At the time of the attack, he was in the right-wing extremist scene in Düsseldorf. Ralf S. rented an apartment near the attack site and ran a militaria shop a few meters from the victims' language school. A few days after the attack, Ralf S. was briefly arrested, but initially the suspicion against him could not be substantiated, so that the investigation against him was discontinued in 2002.

After the public prosecutor's office brought charges on December 7, 2017, the Düsseldorf Regional Court admitted them on December 20, 2017. The main hearing against S. began on January 25, 2018 in Düsseldorf. 37 days of negotiations were scheduled until July 17th. Six co-plaintiffs joined the prosecution . On the first day of the trial, the accused entered into the matter and was questioned in detail. Ralf S. denied the crime and stated that the main witness to whom he was supposed to have confessed to the crime in 2014 had made it up. At the same time it became known that the North Rhine-Westphalian Office for the Protection of the Constitution may have been closer to the accused before and during the act than was initially known.

In May 2018, the defendant was released from pretrial detention due to a lack of urgent suspicion. The statements of several witnesses, to whom the defendant announced or confessed to the bombing, had "not proven to be sufficiently reliable", the court justified its decision in a 51-page decision. NSU-Watch NRW called for the unprocessed role of authorities and informants to be clarified in an investigative committee . In July, the public prosecutor's office demanded a life sentence for the accused, while the defense lawyers pleaded for acquittal. The trial ended on July 31, 2018 with an acquittal for the defendant; the Düsseldorf Regional Court did not consider the evidence to be sufficient for a conviction. The prosecution revision against the decision. The victim lawyers want to join this.

Processing and commemoration

On February 3, 2017, around a hundred demonstrators gathered at the Wehrhahn S-Bahn station and demanded that the attack be further investigated.

The NSU investigation committee of the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament also dealt with the case. There and in some media it was criticized in February 2017 that the investigations were inadequate and that traces in the right-wing scene had not been sufficiently followed up. In addition, there were calls to identify possible people who had been involved in the attack and to set up a separate committee of inquiry in the state parliament to investigate the crime. In addition, it became known that a former undercover agent of the North Rhine-Westphalian Office for the Protection of the Constitution had worked for the alleged perpetrator in the summer of 2000, which the investigative authorities had not been informed of until 2012.

literature

  • 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 C.II: “Sprengstoffanschlag am Wehrhahn”, pp. 550-568 (PDF) .
  • Ronen Steinke : right-wing extremists? Not with us. 20 years after the bomb attack on Jews in Düsseldorf-Wehrhahn - the unpunished terror , Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 28, 2020, p. 5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Traces of death, dead traces. In: Der Spiegel . July 23, 2001.
  2. ↑ a b Konrad Litschko: Arrest 16 years after the attack: “Extremely plausible”. In: The daily newspaper . 1st February 2017.
  3. ↑ a b The NPD prohibition process , Spiegel Online , January 25, 2002.
  4. ↑ Bernd Kasparek: Anti-migrant Konjunkturen - the murders of the NSU and the debates on migration policy in Germany. In: Azar Mortazavi , Tunay Önder, Christine Umpfenbach (eds.): Judgments. A documentary play about the victims of the NSU. With texts about everyday and structural racism. Unrast, Münster 2016, pp. 146–159, here p. 153.
  5. ^ Frank Christiansen: Attack in the S-Bahn: The pipe bomb on the railing killed an unborn child. In: The world . July 27, 2015.
  6. ^ Terror in Cologne and Düsseldorf. Are right-wing extremists responsible for the attacks? In: Jüdische Allgemeine . November 12, 2011.
  7. ↑ Investigations into the Zwickau terror cell. A first reference to Wehrhahn. In: The daily newspaper . 4th January 2012.
  8. ↑ Andrea Röpke : Neo-Nazi bomber? In: look to the right . 1st February 2017.
  9. ↑ a b c d Press conference on the Wehrhahn attack (live ticker for reading). In: WDR.de . 1st February 2017.
  10. ^ Fidelius Schmid, Jörg Diehl: Attack in 2000: SEK arrests alleged bombers from Düsseldorf. In: Spiegel Online . 1st February 2017.
  11. ↑ Stefani Geilhausen: Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor's Office brings charges: Ralf S. is said to have been preparing the Wehrhahn attack for months. In: Rheinische Post. December 7, 2017; The process of the Wehrhahn attack begins in January. In: Rheinische Post. December 21, 2017.
  12. ↑ Day 1 in the Wehrhahn trial. In: NSU-Watch NRW , January 25, 2018.
  13. ↑ Court releases defendants in the Wehrhahn trial from custody. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 17, 2018.
  14. ↑ Court releases defendants in the Wehrhahn trial from custody. In: Spiegel Online , May 17, 2018.
  15. ^ Declaration from "NSU Watch NRW" on the release of the accused from custody. In: NSU-Watch , May 17, 2018.
  16. ↑ Frank Christiansen: "His irrational hatred is the breeding ground for this act". In: Welt Online , July 26, 2018; Düsseldorf: Memorial rally for the 18th anniversary of the Wehrhahn attack. In: Report D , July 29, 2018.
  17. ^ Acquittal in the trial of the bomb attack at the Wehrhahn S-Bahn station. In: Tagesschau.de , July 31, 2018.
  18. ↑ Revision of the Wehrhahn judgment applied for. In: Rheinische Post , August 6, 2018.
  19. ^ Anti-fascist rally at the Wehrhahn S-Bahn station. In: NSU-Watch NRW. February 3, 2017; Stefani Geilhausen: Attack at the Wehrhahn S-Bahn station: Demonstrators do not believe that Ralf S. acted alone. In: Rheinische Post . 4th February 2017.
  20. ↑ Meeting on February 7, 2017 - summary. In: NSU-Watch NRW. February 11, 2017.
  21. ↑ Inadequate search attack at the S-Bahn station: investigator admits breakdowns.  ( 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: Ruhr news . February 7, 2017. Detlef Schmalenberg also commented on the criticism: Attack in Düsseldorf: "Back then there were contacts with neo-Nazis". In: Frankfurter Rundschau . February 1, 2017; Martín Steinhagen: Düsseldorf-Wehrhahn: But then he bragged. In: Zeit Online . February 3, 2017; Peter Berger, Detlef Schmalenberg: Assassination attempt in Düsseldorf: Wehrhahn investigators under criticism. In: Berliner Zeitung . February 7, 2017.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.ruhrnachrichten.de  
  22. ↑ Jörg Diehl, Fidelius Schmid: V-man with alleged Wehrhahn assassin: "Junkie, Dealer, Weiberheld". In: Spiegel Online . February 11, 2017; "The protection of the constitution scandal of enormous dimensions". Press release. In: NSU-Watch NRW. February 11, 2017.

Coordinates: 51 ° 13 '36.2 "  N , 6 ° 47' 58.2"  E