The
'Freital Group': German Prosecutors Go After Right-Wing Terrorism
By
Steffen Winter
April
22, 2016 – 07:37 PM
Local
prosecutors in a German state believed a group had sought to
intimidate refugees. But federal prosecutors have now taken over the
case, accusing members of being part of a far-right terror cell that
may have been out to kill.
Terror can be
terribly banal. For example when people with screen names like
Ninepin Karl, Gypsy Philli, Cookie, Buddy, Riot-Rico and Cuckoo join
forces to fire off Dum Bum-brand fireworks in the middle of the
night. Or when they complain in a chat service called Kakao Talk that
they are having trouble getting ahold of the fruit.
But terror can also
be terribly concrete -- if you know, for example, that "fruit"
is a code word for "explosives." And when you realize that
an elderly care worker, two bus drivers, a railway trainee, a
warehouse worker and an unemployed person were preparing to launch a
wave of right-wing terror attacks across Saxony.
The eastern German
state had already given birth to one neo-Nazi terror cell. Between
the years of 2000 and 2006, the National Socialist Underground (NSU)
murdered nine people across Germany, eight of Turkish background and
one from Greece. The group got its start in Saxony.
Now, police
investigators believe that another right-wing extremist cell was
developing in the state. And early on Tuesday morning, the crack
German police unit GSG 9 arrested five suspected members of the cell
in Freital, a town just southwest of Dresden. They joined others who
were already behind bars.
Federal prosecutors
are calling the cell the "Freital Group" and have labeled
it a terrorist organization. They believe that it formed in July
2015, or perhaps earlier, and that it sought to "violently
promulgate its right-extremist ideology by way of attacks against
asylum-seekers and those of a different political orientation."
The group is
believed to have carried out three attacks thus far. In one of the
attacks, the suspected terror group is thought to have at least
accepted that its actions might result in the deaths of four
asylum-seekers. Currently, prosecutors are investigating whether
additional attacks might be attributable to the accused. According to
the arrest warrants, the suspected group members could face life
sentences in prison.
Unhindered By Police
The case shows a
shift in the approach to far-right violence in Germany. The German
judiciary long declined to view attacks on refugees, particularly
those committed on refugee hostels, as being part of organized,
right-wing terror.
New attacks on
asylum-seeker hostels in Germany are reported on a regular basis. But
police officials nevertheless did not approach the wave of right-wing
violence as a national problem. In some regions, it seemed as though
law enforcement didn't exist at all and that right-wing extremists
could attack asylum-seekers and intimidate residents at will,
unhindered by the police.
Germany's chief
federal prosecutor, Peter Frank, told SPIEGEL in a February interview
that the far right was splintered. He added, however, that if it
became apparent that far-right associations were carrying out attacks
on refugee shelters, he would take charge of the investigation. "In
such a case, we would have to send a message," he said. That is
what happened in Saxony on Tuesday.
The operation in
Freital isn't just emblematic of the state's long-overdue resolve. It
also sheds light on what has gone wrong up until now.
Logs of intercepted
telephone conversations and online chats suggest that Saxon police
were well informed early on of the motives and plans of the Freital
Group. Furthermore, a secret witness has appeared who may have been
an undercover police investigator placed inside the group. Which
raises the question: Could the attacks have been prevented? Both
police officials and local prosecutors in Saxony have been reticent
and have been disinclined to believe that the right-wing group
intended to kill.
Xenophobes could
hardly find a better place to live than Freital, population 40,000.
It is just down the road from Dresden, where the anti-immigrant group
Pegida has been staging demonstrations for over a year now, and it
has also been a hotspot of anti-refugee protests. When a former hotel
in the city was to be transformed into an initial reception center
for refugees, enraged locals protested for days, with hundreds of
police struggling to keep the situation under control. Pegida head
Lutz Bachmann supported the protest, visited a local citizens'
initiative and exhorted on Facebook: "To the streets, people!
Defend yourselves!" It was at a Freital hairdresser where the
notorious photo of Bachmann-as-Hitler was taken.
Connections to the
Vigilante Group
Freital also had a
group that named itself after a city bus route: FTL/360. It was
founded in early 2015 after two Moroccans allegedly harassed
schoolchildren in a public bus. Members of the vigilante group wanted
to patrol in buses and ensure order. A picture of the group on the
internet is accompanied by a motto that in hindsight speaks volumes:
"In the east, there is a tradition of fireworks going off before
New Year's."
Investigators
believe that FTL/360 could be the embryo of the Freital Group.
Several of the eight terror suspects had connections to the vigilante
group.
When they weren't
riding around on city buses as self-anointed security guards, they
spent their time in the "Blue Lagoon." That was their name
for an Aral service station in Freital, located directly across the
street from the police station. It is a place where young people met,
stoked up on liquid courage, bad-mouthed foreigners and developed
plans to stop them.
They also sent each
other chat messages of the most disgusting sort: "We are Nazis
to the bitter end!" Or threats: "Hang 'em on the next light
post with a note, wrong time wrong place, or Kanacke didn't want to
leave, now he's hanging here." Kanacke is a disparaging and
racist German term for foreigners. In another instance, one of the
suspects wrote that "Kanacken" are "defective
biological entities that must be annihilated." Or: "Niggers!
Each one more disgusting than the last! Kill all of them, these
miserable parasites!"
The right-wingers
used several chat channels for internal communication. There was one
for inconsequential discussions, a "Pyrochat" for more
radical group members and an encrypted "Black Chat," open
to just 16 participants. That is where the attack plans were
discussed. One person involved says that "only the terrorists"
used the "Black Chat" channel.
The group quickly
became focused on explosives. Investigators believe that the group
experimented with illegal fireworks from the Czech Republic and
Poland with names like La Bomba, Flash Bangers, Viper 12, Cobra 12,
Red Crosette Mine and Dum Bum. Germany's Federal Criminal Police
Office (BKA) has examined the fireworks, made of potassium
perchlorate, aluminum and sulfur, and come to the conclusion that
they could be deadly. The experts concluded that each firework has
the explosive power of 30 grams of TNT. Deadly lung injuries could
result from standing too close during an explosion and shrapnel could
also lead to death.
'Nasty Explosion'
The Freital-based
anti-asylum group apparently had a lot of fun with their experiments.
Gypsy Philli, a regional bus driver whose real name is Philipp W.,
wrote: "Just set off a firework at the intersection in front of
a shelter. Nasty explosion." Ninepin Karl, an old-age caregiver,
responded: "We heard the boom, you rogue." Gypsy Philli:
"Sickly cool, when I walk home after work at night, I can always
combine it with smaller attacks."
The group gradually
escalated to the point that, as federal prosecutors believe, they
carried out their first attack in Freital, on the night of September
19. A multi-family house located at Bahnhofstrasse 26 had been made
available to refugees. Patrick F. alias Cookie, a pizza delivery man
and a suspected member of the Dresden hooligan group "Fist of
the East" ("Faust des Ostens"), is suspected of having
placed an explosive on the sill of a ground-floor kitchen window and
lit the fuse. There were eight refugees inside. The resulting
explosion shattered the window, destroyed the frame and crumbled part
of the wall. Shrapnel impacted a wall four meters (13 feet) away.
There were no injuries, owing to the fact that no one was in the
kitchen at the time.
Chat records lead
investigators to believe that other members of the group knew about
F.'s impending attack on the apartment. They discussed the purchase
of fireworks in the Czech Republic and Gypsy Philli exulted: "Soon
we'll have enough together to really create a ruckus in Freital."
But something went
amiss: Just a few hours after the explosion, police ran into two
members of the group at the site of the attack and took down their
personal details.
For a month, the
neo-Nazis kept quiet, but then came the next incident. On Oct. 18,
unknown perpetrators attacked a left-wing residential project, called
"Mangelwirtschaft," or Economy of Scarcity, in the Übigau
neighborhood of Dresden, a site right-wingers from Freital visited
regularly.
The city of Dresden
had wanted to make an Übigau gymnasium available to refugees, but
angry locals blocked the entrance to the site. The resulting standoff
lasted for 20 days, before police were able to drive off the
protesters. Investigators believe that members of the suspected
right-wing terror group saw themselves as "protectors" of
the protesters. Officials say that group members regularly met in
front of the Übigau gymnasium.
On Oct. 17, a
demonstrator was injured at the site by two unidentified persons. The
"protectors" immediately suspected that the left-wingers
from "Mangelwirtschaft" were responsible and they wanted
revenge. One wrote: "I'm going crazy tonight!" Another
replied: "They'll get what's coming to them!"
Storming the
Cesspool
"Mangelwirtschaft"
was attacked from both the front and the back. Explosives were
thrown, attached to plastic bottles filled with butyric acid, but
nobody was injured. In chat, the attack was celebrated: "The
washing up is finished. Thanks for the great evening. Hope that we
can repeat such a fruit fest or party."
What the budding
terrorists didn't know: They had long since landed on the police
radar. There are records of monitored telephone calls made on the day
of the attack on "Mangelwirtschaft." Three hours before the
event, at 8:42 p.m., police officers in Leipzig listened to a call
made by suspect Mike S. The subject of the conversation was Übigau
and he asked what he should bring aside from a pot and BS. BS stands
for the German word for butyric acid, "Buttersäure," and
the pot was likely for the explosives. The next call was made at 9:44
p.m. The pot was once again discussed as was the fact that four
bottles of butyric acid were needed. Fourteen minutes later, at 9:58
p.m., the suspects spoke of the fireworks Super Cobra 6 and Cobra 12.
Then, at 10:05 p.m., came a clear reference to the target. Mike S.
asked if he could get a Cobra: "Because of Übigau, we want to
storm the cesspool."
The tools for the
attack were clear and the site had been named. Yet nobody did
anything to stop the perpetrators. It could be that the recording was
made electronically and only later analyzed. It could also be that
the Leipzig-based officer listening in didn't know the area and
didn't put two and two together.
But there are
further oddities. On Oct. 27, an ominous witness presented himself to
the Dresden police. The name of the informant has remained secret and
his address was listed as that of police headquarters. Proof of
identity was noted as "police badge." Was the witness a
police officer?
It quickly became
apparent that the man was an insider. He was familiar with the
group's structure in addition to the names and aliases of members. He
testified about the attack on the leftist residential project and
presented online chat records. It quickly became clear that he had
also been at the Übigau site when the attack started. He says that
he was handed a paving stone to throw, but that he had quickly passed
it along to someone else. Once the fireworks started, he ran away and
went home. Indeed, he behaved just as undercover cops are trained to
act so as to avoid committing crimes while on duty.
Officials familiar
with the case insist that there were no undercover investigators
inside the group and say the witness is not a police officer. They do
not, however, have an explanation for the "police badge"
entry.
Attempted Murder
As such, suspicions
remain that the investigators knew about the next steps planned by
the terrorist group but didn't immediately do anything to stop them.
Twelve days passed between the monitored telephone conversations and
the group's next, apparently most serious, attack. It also came four
days after the appearance of the odd witness.
It was the night of
Oct. 31 when the Freital Group allegedly carried out the attack that
federal prosecutors have classified as attempted murder. Once again,
the target was an asylum hostel in Freital, this one home to four
refugees from Syria. Explosives were placed at three windows and once
again, the detonation was immense. Splinters of glass
eight-millimeters thick flew through the rooms inside, with one
resident receiving eye and forehead injuries. The rest of the
refugees were lucky: Ahmed H. was just going to the refrigerator and
saw the burning fuse in the window by chance. Everyone ran out of the
kitchen and slammed the door behind them.
Two days later, the
first arrest warrants went out and the Freital Group was stopped.
State prosecutors in
Dresden would have been happy enough to let the case be tried at a
lower court. Indeed, the charges had been finished and ready since
Feb. 16. The state prosecutors did not believe the perpetrators had
meant to kill the hostel residents, rather they felt the group had
merely been trying to intimidate the residents and that the attack
had a "demonstrative character." They didn't make a
connection between the series of attacks and terrorism.
But on April 11,
federal prosecutors took over the case, which accounts for the
arrests of additional group members earlier this week. The federal
prosecutors, too, believe intimidation was a motive, but are also
pursuing charges of four counts of attempted murder. The group, they
argue, knew full well how dangerous their fireworks were.
Furthermore, they consider xenophobia to be the group's primary
motive.
Gypsy Philli, alias
Philipp W., had already been in pretrial detention for more than five
months by the time the case was handed over to the feds. He is no
longer prone to making the kind of jokes he was known for in the chat
records.
He recently
complained in a letter to his girlfriend that he has been locked away
for weeks with all kinds of foreigners despite the presumption of
innocence. Because of "a broken window and a couple of
fire-crackers." After all, he wrote, nobody died. Gypsy Philli
doesn't get it. "I thought we lived under the rule of law."
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