Germany's Interior Minister called Wednesday for a national registry of neo-Nazis similar to a list of known Islamists in response to revelations of at least 10 murders by a far-right cell.
Hans-Peter Friedrich told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that a national database should compile “data about violent right-wing extremists and politically motivated violent acts by the right-wing”.
After blistering criticism of gross errors in the decade-long investigation of the 10 murders, Mr. Friedrich said that domestic intelligence bureaus and police on the federal and State level should be required to hand in data.
Chancellor Angela Merkel called the murder of nine shopkeepers of mainly Turkish origin and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007 by a small group calling itself the National Socialist Underground “shameful for Germany”.
Federal prosecutors took over the probe last week after the discovery of the pistol used in the killings in the home of a 36-year-old woman, Beate Zschaepe, a self-confessed neo-Nazi.
Two suspects in the robbery, who were close to Ms. Zschaepe in the far-right scene, were found dead in a caravan shortly afterwards in an apparent suicide.
In a chilling DVD left behind by the two men, Uwe Mundlos (38) and Uwe Boehnhardt (34) they admitted to the unsolved murders of eight men of Turkish origin and a Greek between 2000 and 2006 as well as the policewoman. The killings had been called the “kebab murders” because some of the victims ran snack shops.
