Uniter

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Uniter e. V. (lat. "Uniter": "connected in one") is an association founded in Stuttgart in 2016 which, according to its own information, takes care of maintaining contacts among former and active members of the security forces as well as their further training. He is suspected of being part of the right-wing extremist "Hannibal" network . In addition, Uniter should support the training of the national police in the Philippines .

The association denies references to right-wing extremists and describes itself as a non-partisan and apolitical network, the members of which are all committed to the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany and the Charter of the United Nations .

In autumn 2019, the Stuttgart tax office withdrew the association's non-profit status . In February 2020, the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution declared the association to be a test case . At the end of February 2020, Uniter Rotkreuz announced ZG in Switzerland as the new club headquarters .

First established in 2012

According to a year-long research by the taz , the Bundeswehr soldier Andre S. (pseudonym “Hannibal”) first founded an association called Uniter in Halle (Saale) in 2012 . The purpose was to network elite soldiers, police officers and bodyguards from different federal states. In addition, the soldiers' association of the Bundeswehr elite unit, Special Forces Command (KSK), was supposed to provide professional insurance. The founder had previously consulted an insurance specialist from Allianz Versicherung in Halle, who sold a corresponding insurance policy to Uniter members. The Federal Public Prosecutor General was investigating Andre S. in 2015 because there was a suspicion that secret internal information from KSK circles about operations in Afghanistan had been disclosed to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .

Because a co-founder turned out to be a former employee of the GDR State Security , the founding group fell out and dissolved the association again. However, this remained registered for an unknown reason.

By the time it was dissolved, the first association had around 40 members. Among them were some friends of André S. from a Masonic lodge who knew about insurance bureaucracy. They should enable KSK soldiers to get cheaper insurance through the association. The association remained formally registered until 2019.

Second foundation in 2016

Starting in 2015, André S. founded several chat groups in the messenger service Telegram for preppers , who build supplies in order to survive an expected collapse of the state order on an "X day". These groups of the "Hannibal" network, which are divided into regions (north, south, east, west, Austria , Switzerland ) included active soldiers, reservists, criminal police officers, SEC officials, lawyers, firefighters and others. In their chats, they also discussed right-wing extremist plans to arrest and kill left-wing politicians, activists and individuals who were classified as opponents. Franco A., whose arrest triggered the terrorist investigation against Bundeswehr soldiers from 2017 , belonged to the south chat group . Then André S. closed his chat groups. In summer 2016 he founded Uniter eV again in Stuttgart. The association received a new board and is structured just like the Hannibal network. It was non-profit until autumn 2019.

Members

The association had a total of around 2000 members by the end of 2019. The actual number is estimated to be far lower, for example because, according to the minutes, only six out of seven full members were recorded as present at the 2018 annual general meeting. From Halle's predecessor club, only one of André S.'s Bundeswehr comrade stayed with us. He won over soldiers, police officers and Freemasons for the new foundation in Stuttgart. Ringo M., at that time an employee at the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg , became chairman of the board .

Ringo M. comes from Eisenach and officially resigned from the board of directors on January 16, 2017 (shortly before Franco A. was arrested), but remained a member of an order of knights with André S. As a reason for resignation, he stated in 2019 that the previous members had been too militaristic for him. However, members of the forerunner association said they did not want anything to do with prepper issues and paramilitary exercises. On March 10, 2019, the taz revealed that Ringo M., an employee of the protection of the constitution, had co-founded the association. On March 11, 2019, a new board was entered in the register of associations in Stuttgart. The chairperson is two men who live in Switzerland and manage the association from there.

Ringo M. was the superior of the Baden-Württemberg riot police Michèle Kiesewetter from 2005 to 2007. On April 25, 2007, she was killed in the Heilbronn police murder. The unknown perpetrators are attributed to the right-wing terrorist group National Socialist Underground . Kiesewetter is said to have complained several times about Ringo M., which he denies. Since autumn 2015 Ringo M. has been working for the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the department "International Extremism and Terrorism", from which he was withdrawn by Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) at the end of 2018 after the first revelations about dubious activities by Uniter had come to the public. In April 2019, M. was asked by the NSU investigative committee in the Thuringian state parliament about his relationship with Kiesewetter, about possible right-wing tendencies in his working environment at the time with the riot police and about the background to his involvement with Uniter.

From 2005 to 2014 Ringo M. belonged to the 50-strong Evidence Preservation and Arrest Unit (BFE) 523 of the riot police in Böblingen. Its head was the trained precision shooter Thomas B. The unit included a former Ku Klux Klan member with contacts to the NSU environment. Starting in October 2005, Thomas B. traveled to Libya several times on behalf of the North German company BDB Protection with at least 30 active or former German police officers and soldiers to train security forces for the dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi . At the beginning of 2013, Thomas B. was retired due to serious misconduct. In 2014 he and a befriended SEK official founded a security company in Stuttgart that advises companies that want to send employees to insecure countries. He was in contact with Andre S until at least March 2019; Whether he was or is a member of the Hannibal Network or Uniter could not be proven. His company does small business with Uniter, put in contact with an insurance agent and hired Uniter members as security guards. Another former BFE trainer is the AfD member of the Bundestag Martin Hess .

Ringo M. has been working again for a state authority, the criminal police of Baden-Württemberg, since March 2020. According to the interior ministry of the state, there were "no indications of an extremist attitude on the part of the employee" during security checks.

Until 2017, the Uniter board also included a CDU member in the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg . According to member lists, investigation documents and taz research, at least twelve members of the “Hannibal” network were also active at Uniter by the end of 2018. In their conversations, they equated the Uniter structures with the chat groups. Six of them were identified in 2017 in the course of the terrorist investigation into right-wing extremists in the Bundeswehr. The club members included a bodyguard from the German Football Association for the German national football team , the head of security at the car rental company Sixt and a senior employee of the defense company Diehl Defense . He is said to have contributed to a security concept for a trip by company employees to Saudi Arabia . However, the company denied any current collaboration with Uniter.

According to a report at derStandard.at from March 15, 2019, Brenton Tarrant , who murdered 51 people in the terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch , also linked to the Uniter environment.

In December 2019 it turned out that three CDU politicians from Saxony-Anhalt were also members of the association. The CDU local politician Robert Möritz wore the club symbol on a profile photo. As a result, his previous proximity to neo-Nazism was revealed. He stated that he had left Uniter by December 15, 2019, but still belongs to the "conservative circle" in the state CDU. This refused to exclude him, thus triggering a crisis in the ruling Kenya coalition in the state parliament. On December 20, Möritz finally resigned from the CDU.

According to press reports, the vocational school teacher and Bundeswehr reserve officer Kai Mehliß also belonged to Uniter until mid-December 2019. He was a member of the CDU district executive in Anhalt-Bitterfeld and, like Robert Möritz, an active member of the “Conservative Circle”. Mehliß is also chairman of a Masonic lodge in Bernburg . He knew some of the actors in the first Uniterverein. He had a Uniter email address for club officials. In his residence in Bernburg, a regional meeting of the association took place at the beginning of December, called the "Security Round Table Saxony-Anhalt". Activities there are said to have been planned for 2020. According to the CDU Saxony-Anhalt, Mehliss left Uniter as a result of the reports and under internal pressure. According to its own statements, the association granted an “extraordinary termination”. According to the taz, Mehliß continues to use his Uniter email address.

According to reports from taz and the research portal lsa-rechtsaussen.net from June 2020, Mehliß also had contact with a right-wing extremist prepper group made up of Bundeswehr reservists. They obtained weapons and allegedly completed illegal shooting training in Jüdenberg in order to prepare for a " race war " according to internal chats . In addition to Mehliss, an employee of the AfD parliamentary group and a member of a corona crisis team in Saxony-Anhalt also belonged to the prepper group. Your chat group "Germania Leipzig" belonged to the Leipzig fraternity Germania . In it Mehliss had congratulated the former AfD employee Michael Volker Schuster on his promotion as Bundeswehr reservist with the words: "Congratulations and Sieg Heil, Herr Hauptmann!" In the chat group, among other things, meetings with like-minded "NS" ( National Socialists ), the " Development of a military unit ”and a targeted smuggling into the Bundeswehr in order to obtain pistols, shooting training and weapons licenses. In view of this evidence, the board of the CDU Saxony-Anhalt unanimously decided on June 12, 2020 to exclude Mehliss from the party. The city council group in Bernburg removed all information about him from their website. In order to forestall the exclusion from the party, Mehliss resigned from the CDU on the same day and also resigned from his position as vice-chairman of the workers' maritime association of Saxony-Anhalt. He had denied that the chat statements quoted came from him, but would have had to submit the entire chat history to the exclusion process and prove that the history was falsified.

The reports also revealed that the CDU members involved are highly qualified and that their fraternity is networked with the new right Institute for State Policy in Schnellroda. According to political psychologist Thomas Kliche , this shows "a whole new profile of right-wing extremist strategies". These people are “present in civil society. They don't appear as right-wing extremists, they have a very nice, prosocial facade. So they make it clear: 'We're doing something for the world' and they are planning a civil war ”. To do this, they tried to infiltrate the CDU Saxony-Anhalt and other parties, for example to test how strong their resistance was to merging with the AfD.

According to the registry entry of the Stendal District Court , Theodor S., CDU city councilor in Sandersdorf-Brehna until 2019 , co-founded the first Uniter association in Halle in June 2012 and was unanimously elected second chairman. The chairman came from Gerbstedt in the southern Harz, the third chairman was André S. ("Hannibal") from Halle. Because three out of five board members came from Saxony-Anhalt, there was suspicion of organized cooperation between Uniter and the regional CDU. Theodor S. admitted membership, but emphasized that the former Uniter club had nothing to do with the new club and was only a reserve fellowship. He has not had any contact with André S. for four years, nor does he know Möritz. Theodor S. left the association on December 18, 2019, but defended the founding of the association.

According to WDR, after a dispute with the board of directors, several members with functions in the association, including those from the inner circle, resigned in mid-November 2019. Among them were the "State District Leader Germany" and his deputy at the time. They had done public relations work for Uniter, organized numerous events and defended the association against criticism. Now they accused the board of a lack of transparency: Although two Swiss people are registered as leaders in the association register, some high-ranking management members do not know who actually runs the association. The board of directors did not want to provide any information on the association's internal issues and did not want to disclose the names of the current board members. At the beginning of December 2019, he announced in a circular that the German branch of the association had been "restructured".

At the end of February 2020, Uniter announced the Swiss town of Rotkreuz as the new club headquarters. A spokesman for the association had already announced this move in April 2019 and said that it wanted to show its own neutrality and that the proximity to the many UN organizations based in Switzerland was an advantage.

Two officers in the Potsdam Police Headquarters had been known as members of Uniter since 2019 and are said to have left the association after internal discussions. In spring 2020, your query behavior was checked in the police information system. Both had carried out queries without a comprehensible official reference, one to at least one former unit member, to himself and his family environment, the other researched in the deployment documentation system. The police in Brandenburg are investigating whether they have passed the data on to third parties. Their access to the systems has been withdrawn and disciplinary proceedings have been initiated. Apparently, a media inquiry from March 2020 whether a police officer had misused databases prompted the internal audit.

activities

In 2017 Uniter became a member of the Lazarus Union in Austria and received the characteristics of a sect : members who learned to fencing or riding were able to advance to so-called degrees. According to reports from dropouts, newcomers with hoods over their heads were led to Masonic temples, where rituals with torches took place. There were workshops for knife fighting, for example. The participants should always learn to understand themselves as a unit against an external enemy.

Ringo M., some police officers and KSK members at Uniter let themselves be knighted in the Lazarus Union . Some Freemasons among the Uniter members took part in a ball at the soldier-run American Canadian Grand Lodge in 2018 and were photographed there wearing sashes and badges with the club's logo.

At a soccer game in Hamburg in June 2018, a paramedic group of the association ( Medical Response Unit , MRU) appeared for the first time . With such activities, the association tries to recruit specialists and develop sources of income. The group met again soon after for target practice on a practice area in Mosbach and Ulm . The participants masked themselves and wore military equipment and uniforms. They trained shooting and caring for the wounded at the same time, instructed by a former KSK soldier according to the invitation.

Led by André S., an armed combat unit of the association called Defense also trained in Mosbach in June 2018 . Experts believe that the unit's rifles visible in a photograph are likely to be real; the participants would have a professional background. The club denied this and announced that a self-defense course with dummy weapons had taken place in Mosbach. However, the association did not obtain the permit required for this on the practice area. The purpose of the Defense group is unclear; if the association offers its own combat training and maintains this group as its own combat unit, it would be its paramilitary arm.

In October 2018, members spoke on a Facebook page of the association of a "command pipeline". All had passed the first training session and command training could begin. The term pipeline is used in the KSK when training commandos. It is unclear why a civil society trains its own commandos. The Ministry of the Interior in Baden-Württemberg did not find any right-wing extremist income from the association during the investigation against Franco A. Nevertheless, the training center in Mosbach terminated its cooperation with Uniter eV.

In February 2019, Uniter members offered police officers and soldiers from the Philippines in Manila a privately organized, two to four-year military tactical training course. A former provincial governor was one of the 36 first participants. You showed yourself in photographs with an outstretched right fist as a supporter of the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte . Some wore camouflage or body armor and rifles at the ready. Uniter stated that the training goal was to prepare the participants for extreme situations; they do not need any previous knowledge of weapons. "High-ranking members of the police, army, air force and navy, but also employees of state services and independent security companies, the professional fire brigade and some diplomats and lawyers" took part. The report did not name the country. The course should also attract new members to the international network. Graduates received a badge with a wolf's head with bared teeth and the inscription "Semper Fidelis" (Latin: "forever loyal").

According to association documents from 2017 and 2018, testimony and research by the taz , Uniter is hierarchically divided into five to seven ranks. A diagram illustrates the structure of the association as a pyramid of members, above the board of trustees and the board of directors, at the top the " Eye of Providence " known from secret societies . According to a text written by "Hannibal", combat training, knowledge of military tactics, hand-to-hand combat, self-defense and the use of weapons as well as "will, steadfastness and perseverance" and lifelong loyalty are required for the rise to third rank. The ascent to fifth rank should therefore be carried out with a sect-like ritual, which includes a symbolic killing with swords, a resurrection and drinking red wine from a human skull. In order to be promoted to district leader, an oath of loyalty is required on a Germany flag printed with the Uniter symbol. According to a schedule known as the “command pipeline”, the paramilitary training of the association, which was uncovered in 2018, was to include 30 modules in four stages, from tactical movement in urban urban warfare to close combat in mountains, water and air to “combat readiness”. After "Hannibal's" chat messages, he wanted to use it to train "good infantrymen" who could be deployed worldwide. New members should initially not find out about these goals of the association and should only gradually be inaugurated after reliability checks. District leaders were sworn to secrecy and were not allowed to have any contact with the press.

The association offered its members jobs with security companies and authorities via an internal job exchange. In April 2018, a unit member for a Ravensburger security company looked in the chat group for a deputy for the state initial reception center for asylum seekers in Sigmaringen . The security company later distanced itself from the association when asked and stated that they had no knowledge of the job exchange. In June 2019, a subcontractor commissioned by the energy company RWE deployed unit members for the "covert surveillance of the outer ring of the RWE premises" in Garzweiler . This was directed against an alliance against lignite mining. According to a spokesman for RWE, the hired people should "warn activists not to break into the opencast mine [...]". The group is not aware of your membership in Uniter.

Reactions

After a KSK member turned out to be a Uniter member during the terror investigations against Bundeswehr soldiers in 2017, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office observed the association. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Baden-Württemberg transferred Ringo M. in mid-2019 after his club membership became known.

In February 2019, the Federal Ministry of Defense rated the association as a harmless support association for active and former members of the armed forces, the police and other security forces. In December 2019, the federal government also determined that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was not monitoring the association, but was continuing to investigate evidence of extremist efforts.

The United Grand Lodges of Germany eV distanced themselves from Uniter in 2019 and published a declaration of incompatibility. However, the individual grand lodges decide on how to deal with unit members.

The Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) saw "possible links to extremism" at Uniter since 2018. The MAD and the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution founded a joint working group on the association in 2019. It is intended to evaluate findings on its activities, as Uniter specifically recruits former commandos and former SEK members of the police. The MAD is not allowed to observe the latter, but the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is. According to media reports from February 19, 2020, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has now declared Uniter to be a test case. It can thus systematically evaluate possible anti-constitutional tendencies in the association, but is not allowed to monitor telephones, recruit informants or use other intelligence means. The BfV is not allowed to inform about test cases and therefore did not confirm the corresponding classification of Uniters, but stated in response to inquiries: One evaluates "continuously different groups of persons with regard to the existence of actual indications for an effort against the free democratic basic order".

According to WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung , the tax office in Stuttgart revoked the non-profit status of the association in autumn 2019. An objection by the association was rejected in mid-February 2020. The association does not want to take legal action against it because it is now based in Switzerland and is recognized there as a non-profit organization. The German association is already in the process of being dissolved.

On March 1, 2020, Young Socialists from the canton of Zug demonstrated against Uniter in Rotkreuz. The cantonal parliamentary group of the alternative - the Green Train, requested with an interpellation that the association's right-wing extremist payments to the Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) should also be checked, and information about who had informed the canton's police and government about the association's move, whether they had the opinion of the The protection of the German constitution shared how the cantonal council assesses the risk of right-wing extremist attacks in Zug and Switzerland. The Swiss NDS has not yet rated Uniter as dangerous.

After a right-wing extremist prepper group with contacts to Uniter became known, the secret service committee of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt found out in a confidential meeting on June 8, 2020 that the constitutional protection of Saxony-Anhalt had not had any of the prepper group and its connections to Uniter and the state CDU Had knowledge. Henriette Quade (Die Linke Sachsen-Anhalt) asked for a full explanation of how Uniter, the Hannibal network, prepper groups and right-wing extremist activities of individual KSK elite soldiers are related. Saxony-Anhalt's Interior Minister Holger Stahlknecht promised to have these payments checked by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the MAD. Stahlknecht, however, is counted on the right wing of the CDU, which often votes together with the AfD. The Leipzig Public Prosecutor's Office initiated preliminary investigations into contacts between Uniter members and right-wing extremists in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. The state security of the State Criminal Police Office of Saxony dealt with it. The Federal Ministry of Defense and the Bundeswehr Reservists Association promised to clarify the situation and asked the reservists involved and those responsible for shooting sports for comments in writing. The president of the Saxon state group of the reservists' association, on the other hand, defended the prepper on Facebook: “Much ado about nothing! During the onslaught of millions of refugees from war zones, these weirdos pondered how they could survive the extermination of the Germans. They did not intend to abolish the Federal Republic, nor did they want to exterminate the foreigners. "

Two association members who worked as police officers in the Potsdam Police Headquarters made more than 100 illegal data queries without reference to their professional tasks. One of the two asked 17 questions about the founder of Uniter Germany and eleven questions about himself and his partner. His colleague made 90 queries without any direct business connection. This was the result of random checks by the internal audit department. Access rights were revoked from both police officers, disciplinary proceedings were initiated against them and the public prosecutor's offices in Neuruppin and Frankfurt (Oder) were asked to investigate their conduct under criminal law. Because the threatening e-mails from " NSU 2.0 " had been preceded several times since 2018 by illegal data queries from police officers, the suspicion of a right-wing extremist network in the Hesse police force arose. Data misuse by the police is therefore observed more closely than before in other federal states.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Hannibal's association. taz, December 21, 2018; Martin Kaul, Christina Schmidt: Right network in the Bundeswehr: Hannibal's shadow army. taz, November 16, 2018
  2. ^ A b c d e Sebastian Erb: Uniter membership of Robert Möritz: An obscure association. taz, December 18, 2019
  3. ↑ a b Martin Kaul: Decision of the tax office - Uniter loses non-profit status. Tagesschau.de, February 28, 2020
  4. ^ A b c Sebastian Erb, Martin Kaul, Alexander Nabert, Sabine Schmidt: taz research on right network: Hannibals Reisen. taz, March 15, 2019
  5. ↑ a b Co-founder of Uniter: NSU committee summons Kiesewetter's superiors. MDR, March 13, 2019
  6. ↑ Sebastian Erb, Christina Schmidt: What did Ringo M. know? taz, April 4, 2019
  7. ↑ Christoph Schmidt: Right scene: Uniter co-founder now works for the criminal police. Spiegel, March 6, 2020
  8. ^ The Christchurch assassin referred to right-wing soldiers in the Bundeswehr - their network leads to Austria. Standard.at, March 15, 2019
  9. ↑ Timo Lehmann: CDU man with a right-wing extremist past: Saxony-Anhalt's fall into sin. Der Spiegel, December 15, 2019
  10. ↑ a b Sebastian Erb, Christina Schmidt: taz research on right-wing extremists: dismay over prepper group. taz, June 12, 2020
  11. ^ A b Susan Bonath: Networks: Stahlknecht's brown appendix. Junge Welt, June 15, 2020
  12. ↑ Aline Wobker, Jens Schmidt: CDU exit after "Sieg Heil" chat. Volksstimme, June 12, 2020
  13. ↑ Helene Schreiner: Saxony-Anhalt: "A completely new profile of right-wing extremist strategies". DLF, June 10, 2020
  14. ↑ a b Markus Decker: Suspected right-wing extremism: Ex-CDU city councilor was the deputy chief of Uniter. RND, December 17, 2019
  15. ^ Another CDU member resigned from the controversial Uniter association. MDR , December 18, 2019
  16. ↑ CDU politician defends the original "Uniter" foundation. MDR, December 18, 2019
  17. ^ Janina Findeisen, Martin Kaul: Leadership members resigned: Rift at Uniter. Tagesschau.de, December 20, 2019
  18. ↑ Harry Ziegler: Controversial association “Uniter” moves to Rotkreuz. Luzerner Zeitung, February 27, 2020
  19. ↑ Police officers who used to work at Uniter are said to have sniffed databases. Spiegel online, May 19, 2020
  20. ↑ Press kit: The association
  21. ↑ Sebastian Erb, Christina Schmidt, Daniel Schulz: Internal documents of the Uniter association - red wine from the skull. The daily newspaper, February 24, 2020
  22. ↑ Hans-Martin Tillack: Right network: Association of soldiers "Hannibal" invited to apparently unauthorized target practice. Stern.de, August 6, 2019
  23. ↑ Der Spiegel No. 14/2019, p. 21
  24. ↑ Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt: Uniter: The protection of the constitution makes a controversial association a "test case". Spiegel online, February 19, 2020
  25. ↑ Harry Ziegler: Verein Uniter calls Zug politics on the scene. Luzerner Zeitung, March 2, 2020
  26. ↑ Jan Schumann: Prepper network: authorities clueless: CDU chief Stahlknecht is checking connection with the party. Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, June 8, 2020
  27. ^ After the Nazi chat: Mehliß resigns from the CDU. MDR, June 12, 2020
  28. ↑ Police officers with a Uniter past made over 100 dubious data queries. RND, July 22, 2020