NSU investigation in Hamburg: An investigative committee would move forward

A scientific research group is appropriate and completely sufficient, Hamburg's ruling coalition of the SPD and the Greens decided three years ago. There is no need for a Parliamentary Investigative Committee (PUA) to answer remaining open questions about the circumstances of the murder of Süleyman Taşköprü by the so-called National Socialist Underground (NSU) in June 2001. The scientists would dig out all the necessary knowledge from the archive and file material.

In the meantime, however, it has become clear that the research group cannot access all the necessary files; The Federal Prosecutor General, with whom they lie, does not want to release them. And now a report from the Bundestag's research service shows: If the SPD and the Greens had used a PUA, then the Federal Prosecutor General probably would not have been allowed to refuse to release it.

The report was commissioned by the Hamburg Bundestag member Cansu Özdemir (Left). In it, the scientific service states that a PUA has a “constitutionally anchored right to file submission”. On the other hand, according to Section 476 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, a research project “according to the prevailing opinion has no corresponding substantive legal claim”. The data transfer would be at the “dutiful discretion of the responsible body”.

Özdemir's party colleague Deniz Celik, who is the left-wing faction's domestic policy spokesman, sharply criticizes the red-green coalition: "The report undermines the red-green excuse." The SPD in particular recently suggested that a PUA would probably not have received the relevant files from the Federal Prosecutor General. “The Scientific Service states unequivocally that a committee of inquiry has a stronger and more far-reaching legal position compared to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office,” says Celik. The current dispute over the files would show that “the SPD and the Greens have consciously chosen the weaker instrument”.

In the spring of 2023, there was a dispute within the coalition over the question of whether there should be a PUA. To this day, Hamburg is the only federal state in which the NSU core trio Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe murdered and no investigative committee followed.

The Greens were actually in favor of it, but were unable to prevail against the SPD as junior partners. Instead, they agreed to set up the research project. By preventing a PUA, the Red-Green Party “accepted that the hands of the investigation would be tied exactly where enforceable rights against authorities matter,” says Celik.

However, the Hamburg Citizens' Office, where the research project is docked, now explains that only limited conclusions can be drawn from the report regarding the right to submit files to investigative committees of the state parliaments. In any case, there is still a lawsuit pending at the Karsruhe Higher Regional Court, which the citizens' office had filed together with the research group. They do not believe that the Federal Prosecutor's Office can legally withhold the files.

Theoretically, however, the research group could view the files in question now. They were passed on to the Hamburg alliance against the right, and in June the alliance handed over a USB stick with the files to the mayor Carola Veit (SPD). She explained that the material would be kept safe but not visible.