Tino Brandt

Tino Brandt (* 30th January 1975 in Saalfeld / Saale ) was in the 1990s one of the most active neo-Nazi - squad in Thuringia , national vice chairman of the NPD and co-founder and head of the " Free Kameradschafts " network " Thuringian homeland security " (THS). His exposure as a V-Person of the Thuringian secret service in May 2001 provoked nationwide stir. In December 2014 he was sentenced to five and a half years imprisonment in 66 cases for the sexual abuse of children and young people , aiding in sexual abuse and promoting prostitution .

Brandt's neo-Nazi career until his exposure

Tino Brandt from Rudolstadt became active in the right-wing extremist scene in the early 1990s and quickly became one of the most important neo-Nazis in Thuringia. Even as a schoolboy, he proclaimed “ nationally liberated zones ” in his hometown . From 1992 onwards he was co-organizer and registrant of rallies on several occasions.

Activities in Bavaria

In May 1993, Brandt moved from Landau an der Isar to Regensburg to build a cadre for the right-wing extremist organization Nationaler Block (NB). At the time, the NL was the Bavarian offshoot of the community of ideas of the New Front , which u. a. by the neo-Nazi Michael Kühnen , it was banned on June 7, 1993 by the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior . At that time, Brandt was networked with neo-Nazi organizations in many ways and distributed a.o. a. Information material for the Freundeskreis Freiheit für Deutschland , a right-wing extremist organization that was banned in August 1993. In this context, two months later, the Bochum public prosecutor opened an investigation against Brandt for "inciting racial hatred".

In Regensburg, Brandt started a training position in a supermarket and at that time lived in a Kolping Society's apprenticeship home . With his National Socialist propaganda he came into the focus of antifa groups, who then distributed leaflets with the following headline at his place of work: “Brand (t) founder at MEISTER? TINO BRANDT will serve you… “After a criminal complaint by Brandt, this resulted in a defamation lawsuit in which two people who distributed leaflets were sentenced to a fine. Brandt's training was broken off shortly before the trial. On the question of whether Brandt worked for the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution during his time in Regensburg , Maria Scharfenberg , member of the Bavarian State Parliament , made a request to the Bavarian state government in November 2011. The answer from the Bavarian Interior Minister Hermann in January 2012 shows that Brandt was monitored by the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the early 1990s, but was not contacted. He was also not in the service of the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, but an exchange of information between the State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution in Thuringia and Bavaria had taken place.

Activity for the Thuringian constitution protection

Brandt then moved to Thuringia and was recruited as an informant by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution . On May 14, 1994, he organized a right-wing rock concert in Rudolstadt , to which around 350 neo-Nazis from all over Germany traveled. At the same time, the " Anti-Antifa Ostthüringen" first appeared in public, from which 1996/97 the comradeship network Thuringian Homeland Security emerged . Brandt was a contact person and, together with Ralf Wohlleben and André Kapke from Jena, co-initiator and organizer of the Anti-Antifa and the THS . Officially, he was the press spokesman for the organization whose website, which was set up in 2000, was registered with him. Brandt was considered to be the head of the network that made a decisive contribution to the nationwide networking of the Thuringian neo-Nazi scene.

In 1996 the German Circle of Friends (DFK) was formed around Brandt , whose main field of activity was the recruiting and networking of right-wing extremist youth in the area around Saalfeld and Rudolstadt. From the mid-1990s he worked as a commercial clerk at the right-wing extremist nation and Europe publishing house in Coburg , was still a correspondent for the neo-Nazi Berlin-Brandenburger Zeitung published by Frank Schwerdt and was active in the Thule network mailbox system under the pseudonym " Till Eulenspiegel " .

Franconian homeland security and deputy state chairman of the Thuringian NPD

Claus Nordbruch later spread the information that the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution wanted to recruit Brandt after he moved to Franconia . For Nation and Europe , for example, he was also involved in the organization of a congress of the Society for Free Journalism (GfP). At his place of work in Coburg, he founded another network based on the model of the THS, the Franconian Heimatschutzbund . Brandt took part with other neo-Nazi cadres on a trip to South Africa to see Claus Nordbruch, where, among other things, they held target practice. From 1999 he worked as state press spokesman and from April 2000 also as deputy state chairman of the Thuringian NPD. He had to resign from his position as press spokesman for the NPD for “technical reasons” after three proceedings against him for “using symbols of unconstitutional organizations” were pending against him at the Gera public prosecutor's office and several house searches had taken place. In the summer of 2000 he was also involved in the founding of the regional association of the NPD youth organization JN . In the same year he received 2000 DM from an employee of the Thuringian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution , which he was supposed to hand over to the fugitive members of the right-wing terrorist group, which was later exposed as the National Socialist underground , so that they could obtain false passports. With the help of the new ID cards, the aim was to track down those who were wanted, and the donation was also intended to strengthen Brandt's reputation in the scene. Brandt did not hand over the money directly as planned, but to another middleman. The NSU members obtained ID cards, although it is not known whether they actually received the 2000 DM from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Unmasking as an informant for the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution in May 2001

Exposure through the media

On May 12, 2001, the Thuringian General (TA) reported that the state authority for the protection of the constitution in Thuringia had been running the neo-Nazi Tino Brandt as an informant for several years . In the run-up to its publications, the TA observed a meeting between Brandt and his liaison with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Both Brandt and the NPD initially denied it. Interior Minister Christian Köckert (CDU) and the President of the State Office, Thomas Sippel , also weighed down. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine on May 21, 2001, Tino Brandt finally confessed to having worked for the protection of the constitution in Thuringia under the code name "Otto" since 1994. At the beginning of 2001 he said he had stopped his activity, but there were seven follow-up meetings with the office after his "shutdown". The reason for the termination of the cooperation is said to have been an event by the Jena Burschenschaft Jenensia on December 1, 1999, at which the Coburg right-wing extremist Peter Dehoust , publisher of Nation and Europe and thus Brandt's employer, appeared as a speaker. At the event observed by VS, the THS, including Brandt, provided the hall security. The scandal surrounding Dehoust's appearance in Jena led to a group of fraternities and old men splitting off from Jenensia and supposedly founded the right-wing extremist fraternity, Normannia zu Jena , with Brandt's participation . After the end of the cooperation by the secret service and the almost simultaneous unmasking of Thomas Dienel , however, the information became scarce, so that the long-standing liaison Brandts in the protection of the Constitution strongly advocated reactivating it and again meetings took place almost weekly in Coburg.

Payments from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to Tino Brandt

During the entire period, Brandt received over 200,000 DM for his work, that is around 800 DM per week. Brandt provided information about planned or carried out violent attacks by neo-Nazis on political opponents and among themselves, assessments of demonstrations and marches, identified people on photos and later provided information about internal comments and decisions of the NPD. Brandt later stated in the Thüringer Allgemeine that he had used the money primarily to finance right-wing extremist activities. A little later he resigned from his offices and resigned from the NPD in order to “no longer burden the party.” The press spokesman Ralf Wohlleben made the statement “that neither the state executive of the NPD Thuringia nor the party executive are aware of the Tino Brandt's activity. Not even a single mark of the salary flowed into party coffers. ”Brandt confirmed this in a broadcast on ZDF and stated that he had used the money from the constitution protection for his political activities outside the NPD, in particular for the Thuringian homeland security . For example, the production of flyers for a broad publicity campaign and other advertising campaigns of the THS were financed. The NPD justiciar Hans Günter Eisenecker put down a mandate for his defense after Brandt's exposure.

Sections of the right-wing extremist scene, such as the Internet portal Die Kommenden, attempted in the debates that followed to "expose" Brandt as homosexual and thus further discredit him in the predominantly homophobic neo-Nazi scene. After unmasking of the neo-Nazi squad Thomas Dienel as an undercover agent of the secret service a year before this was another scandal. The Dienel affair had led to an internal crisis in the Thuringian state office and the replacement of its president, Helmut Roewer . After the new exposure, strong allegations were made against the new head of office Thomas Sippel and Interior Minister Christian Köckert . After he took office, Sippel had promised that no leading figures in the neo-Nazi scene would be recruited or even managed. However, it became known that at this point in time six to seven leaders of the NPD in Thuringia were supposed to live on funds from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The PDS member of the state parliament, Carsten Huebner , therefore asked what the sense of the program for dropouts from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution makes if activists also receive substantial sums of money "without getting out and apparently without providing usable information".

It was also known that both Köckert and Sippel had been untruthful. Köckert claimed that Brandt had already been "switched off" in 2000, that is, still under Roewer, and that, as the employer, he had no knowledge of the neo-Nazi as an unofficial employee. However, in a supervisory complaint from June 2000, written by a head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to a senior official in the Ministry of the Interior , this case is expressly mentioned, and this after the secret service's dealings with Dienel were exposed. The state parliament member Bodo Ramelow (PDS) was also able to prove that Köckert had been aware of Brandt's undercover agent services since Roewer's leave of absence. In addition, Roewer Brandt had actually switched off, but the then incumbent President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and soon-to-be Vice President Peter Nocken reactivated the NPD state vice-president after consulting with Erfurt State Secretary Georg Brüggen, who later became head of state chancellery in Saxony. Sippel, in turn, had assured that at the end of January 2001, Brandt had finally terminated the cooperation. Seven conspiratorial “follow-up meetings”, at which the right-wing extremist collected a total of 6,900 marks, were not mentioned. Furthermore, the suspicion was expressed that Nocken had leaked information about an imminent house search to a Blood and Honor activist, who was also working as an informant, as this was "clinically clean", according to the intelligence agencies.

The Thuringian constitutional protector Reiner Bode, who is responsible for Brandt, defended the payments. Before the NSU investigative committee of the Thuringian state parliament, Bode said that informants had been paid according to their value, and that Brandt was a top entry point into the right-wing scene in all of Germany for the state office.

In 2007, during a house search, the recording of a conversation between Brandt and Thorsten Heise was found. During the course of the conversation, Brandt speaks openly about his work as an undercover agent. However, the tape was not evaluated until 2012.

Investigations against Tino Brandt

Proximity to the NSU complex

On January 26, 2012, Brandt was summoned to Karlsruhe by the Federal Prosecutor's office to question witnesses. He described his relationship with Uwe Mundlos , Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe , who are suspected of having formed the core of the right-wing extremist terror group National Socialist Underground , as that of a messenger. According to André Kapke, however, Brandt is said to have helped the NSU underground. Before the NSU investigative committee of the Stuttgart state parliament, Brandt testified in February 2018 that he had donated funds from the constitution protection to the NSU with its knowledge.

A possible connection to the police murder in Heilbronn , in which Michèle Kiesewetter, also from the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district, was killed in 2007, is also the subject of the public prosecutor's review.

During the NSU trial , Brandt testified that he was warned against police searches by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Furthermore, at the beginning of his spying activity in the 1990s, one of his undercover agents "regularly" gave him information about the anti-fascist scene. In addition, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution paid him money for technical equipment and telephone costs. In March 2015, the dpa reported on false statements by Tino Brandt in the NSU trial.

Fraud charges

The answer from March 2012 to a parliamentary question from Martina Renner from the Thuringian parliamentary group Die Linke shows that Brandt has been investigated 35 times since 1994 for sedition, breach of the peace, damage to property, fraud and the formation of criminal associations. The majority of the proceedings were closed. Brandt was charged eight times, but ultimately not convicted.

In September 2012, Brandt filed for personal bankruptcy , whereby the claims of the creditors add up to a seven-digit amount according to a report by the Thüringer Allgemeine . In addition, after a house search in March 2012, the public prosecutor's office investigated Brandt and 13 people around him for commercial gang fraud. They are said to have raised money through insurance fraud with bogus work accidents in their company. According to a report by the police in Saalfeld, damage of around 1.86 million euros should have occurred. Several suspects gave confessions and stated that Brandt was the "organizer and mastermind" and had taken large parts of the money for himself. A house purchase made by Brandt in Heilbronn in 2004 was also examined. Since the purchase price was never paid, the bank's administrator sold the property again in 2008. At the beginning of March 2017 it became known that the Gera public prosecutor had brought charges against Brandt and 13 other people for insurance fraud. The trial at the Gera Regional Court was scheduled to begin on April 11, 2018, but was postponed because two defendants did not appear. The process is expected to last through 2019.

Conviction for child molestation and related offenses

In December 2014 Brandt was sentenced to five and a half years imprisonment in 66 cases by the Gera regional court for sexual abuse of children and young people, aiding in sexual abuse and promoting prostitution. In 91 other suspected cases, the proceedings were discontinued as the court concentrated on the more serious suspected cases. Brandt admitted in court that he had offended a child and several young people under the age of 18. He also confessed to having given minors to clients for money. According to the court, Brandt committed the crimes in the period from mid-2011 to mid-2014. Brandt had developed and maintained friendly relationships with the victims, who came from precarious circumstances. Sometimes Brandt had driven the abuse victims himself in his car to the appointments with the suitors .

Brandt served his sentence in the Tonna correctional facility . He was released from prison on January 16, 2020.

Web links

• Thuringian NPD cadre cashed in. In: HaGalil . May 14, 2001.
• Ex-V-man in the NSU trial: Brandt, the founder. In: Spiegel Online . June 7, 2016.

Footnotes

1. ↑ See file of the Bochum public prosecutor's office 33 Js 566/92. It is not yet known what the outcome of this procedure was.
2. ↑ Mittelbayerische Zeitung of February 27, 1994. All information on Regensburg comes from it.
3. ↑ Florian Sendtner: I'm not interested in backgrounds. Bavarian State Newspaper. December 2, 2011.
4. ↑ Stefan Aigner: The Nazi career of Tino Brandt: The protection of the constitution knows (almost) nothing more ... , regensburg-digital from January 12, 2012 (accessed January 12, 2012).
5. ^ From neo-Nazi to undercover agent , in: Bayerische Staatszeitung , December 23, 2011, p. 4
6. ↑ Claus Nordbruch reports on his game with fire - Dr. Claus Nordbruch spoke to the head of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Tino Brandt ( memento from November 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) about his conversation with Tino Brandt.
7. ↑ Investigation talk with the constitutional protection spy Tino Brandt (Rudolstadt 2001) ( Memento from May 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ Investigators worked against each other , Berliner Zeitung online , December 19, 2011 (accessed December 19, 2011)
9. ↑ The Protection of the Constitution continues to pay right-wing executives, in: Thüringer Allgemeine from May 12, 2001
10. ^ The most active NPD functionary in Thuringia is on the payroll for the protection of the constitution, in: Thüringer Allgemeine from May 12, 2001
11. ↑ The V-Mann and the NPD: Is the prohibition procedure in danger? In: Der Tagesspiegel, No. 17656 of January 24, 2002, p. 002.
12. ↑ Ex-Verfassungsschützer defends payments to Brandt. MDR.de of October 9, 2012.
13. ↑ Stefan Aust , Dirk Laabs : Heimatschutz. The state and the NSU series of murders. Pantheon Verlag Munich 2014, p. 119ff.
14. ↑ Julia Jüttner: Thuringian V-Mann Brandt. "I was just the messenger" , in: Der Spiegel from March 22, 2012
15. ↑ What role did undercover Brandt play? , in: Tagesschau.de of November 21, 2013
16. ^ NSU committee: Ex-V-Mann donated part of his fee to the NSU. In: Zeit Online , February 19, 2018.
17. ↑ Peter Rathay: Ex-neo-Nazi chief of the Thuringian homeland security is broke. In: Thüringer Allgemeine , September 12, 2012.
18. ↑ The Office for the Protection of the Constitution warned neo-Nazi informers against searches. In: The West .
19. ↑ Right-wing extremism researcher: The protection of the constitution committed unlimited crime against democracy. In: Thuringian General .
20. ↑ Tino Brandt brags about false statements in front of fellow inmates. In: Stern.de .
21. ↑ Martin Debes: 35 unsuccessful preliminary investigations against former undercover agents , in: Thüringer Allgemeine from March 16, 2012
22. ↑ ^{a b} Thüringer Allgemeine: Serious allegations against Tino Brandt. July 18, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015 . 
23. ↑ Mammoth proceedings expected: Indictment against Tino Brandt and Thomas Dienel. ( Memento from March 9, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) In: Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk , March 1, 2017.
24. ^ Neo-Nazi and ex-criminal Tino Brandt in court. In: InSüdthüringen.de , February 23, 2018; Jon Shelton: Neo-Nazi Tino Brandt to go on trial for fraud. In: Deutsche Welle , February 23, 2018.
25. ↑ Fraud proceedings before the Gera Regional Court adjourned. In: Welt Online , April 11, 2018.
26. ^ ^{A b c} MDR: Neo-Nazi Brandt sentenced to five and a half years in prison. December 18, 2014, archived from the original on July 28, 2015 ; Retrieved July 29, 2015 . 
27. ^ Child abuse: neo-Nazi Tino Brandt sentenced to five and a half years in prison
28. ↑ Augsburger Allgemeine : Child abuse: neo-Nazi Brandt sentenced to five years in prison , December 18, 2014, accessed on June 8, 2016
29. ↑ ^{a b} Children personally driven to the suitors: Five and a half years imprisonment for Tino Brandt. Thüringer Allgemeine, December 19, 2014, accessed on July 29, 2015 .