German spy agency 'destroyed neo-Nazi files'

By Ayhan Simsek

BERLIN

A criminal complaint has been lodged against a former senior German security service officer over claims he destroyed secret files on the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) terror group.

Lothar Lingen headed the federal domestic intelligence service’s division charged with investigating right-wing terrorism when he allegedly destroyed dozens of informant files in 2011, a lawyer for one of the victims of the group told Anadolu Agency.

Carsten Ilius, who issued the complaint, said Lingen wanted to prevent any potential inquiry unveiling mistakes made by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) during its investigations of the NSU.

A neo-Nazi cell killed 10 people, including eight Turkish and one Greek immigrant as well as a police officer, between 2000 and 2007 without seeming to arouse suspicion.

In November 2011, the group, which was based in Thuringia, east-central Germany, was revealed when two members died after an unsuccessful bank robbery and police found guns and propaganda at their apartment. A third member is currently standing trial.

However, recent revelations have shown that the BfV had dozens of informants with ties to the NSU from the late 1990s.

“The recently revealed testimony of Lingen shows that they shredded the files at the agency soon after the NSU murders became public in 2011 because they worried about a potential investigation into these files,” Ilius said.

“Lingen’s testimony and his behavior strengthens our view that these files might have had important information with regard to NSU.”

In testimony given by Lingen -- who uses a legally sanctioned assumed name -- to investigators in 2014, which was leaked to the media last week, the former officer admitted ordering the shredding of files on far-right informants.

He claimed informants in Thuringia had no information about the existence of the NSU cell or the murders.

Although investigators knew about the destruction of the files in 2012, an investigation opened by Cologne’s criminal court into Lingen was dropped the same year due to lack of evidence of misconduct.

Ilius said the loss of the files had hindered the investigation into the NSU murders. He is one of the lawyers representing the family of Mehmet Kubasik, murdered in Dortmund in 2006, who have lodged a complaint in Cologne demanding the investigation be reopened and that Lingen, who is believed to work in a different government department, be prosecuted.