Photo Gallery Troublesome Government Help
It has been one year since German law enforcement officials unconvered the National Socialist Underground, a neo-Nazi terror cell that is believed to have murdered nine men belonging to ethnic minorities as well as a female police officer. The government's failures in fighting right-wing terrorists have plunged domestic intelligence agencies in the country into the worst crisis since their establishment.
The large number of informants used by the government within the neo-Nazi and far-right extremist scene has drawn a considerable amount of criticism, but German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich of the conservative Christian Social Union party says they are indispensible. "It doesn't work without informants," he said. "If we no longer have informants, we get no information from the community."
In a 1997 "position paper," Germany's Federal Police Office (BKA) vented its frustrations over the Office for the Protection of the Constitution over what it believed was "increasing divergence" between the domestic intelligence agencies and law enforcement. The BKA warned the informants could have an "incendiary effect," goading other extremists to commit even bigger acts. It also alleged that some sources who were "found to be criminals" were often "neither indicted nor convicted".
This photo shows suspected NSU member Beatte Zschäpe (center, front), who is being held in police custody as she awaits trial, at a neo-Nazi march in the German city of Worms in 1996 commemorating the annivesary of the death of senior Nazi official Rudolf Hess. The marches, a former annual tradition of neo-Nazis, have since been banned by German courts. One of the informants currently under scrutiny is believed to have helped organize the march.
Zschäpe (left) is shown here with Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos. The two men died in a murder-suicide one year ago after police began closing in on them.
That leaves Zschäpe as the lone survivor who is believed to have played a leading role in the terrorist cell.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution says that it is being far more careful about its informants, with a task force now in place to track and monitor the work of source managers. Addressing the problematic relationship between police and domestic intelligence in the past, the new president of the agency says: "The culture of cooperation between the police and intelligence service has already changed."
