Indian-origin MP in Germany Sebastian Edathy will head a parliamentary inquiry committee that will investigate the racist-motivated murders across the country by a neo-Nazi cell evading detection for more than a decade.
In a rare show of unity, all parties' representatives in Bundestag, lower house of Parliament, voted unanimously for the setting up of the 11-member committee on Thursday.
The committee will probe why intelligence agencies and security authorities failed to prevent the murder of nine Turkish and Greek entrepreneurs and a woman police officer between 2000 and 2007.
It is expected to reveal how the right extremist group, National Socialist Underground (NSU), could operate undetected from its base in the eastern State of Thuringia. It will also try to unravel the structure of the neo-Nazi cell and to establish whether the cell received any support from members of intelligence services.
Restoring confidence
The panel would do everything to restore public confidence in the constitutional State, which was shaken by revelations that the cell unleashed its terror without being detected for such a long period, Mr. Edathy told Bundestag during a debate before the vote.
Its main goal was to make sure that such crimes did not happen again. Unlike in former parliamentary inquiries, there would be no conflict among the political parties this time because they were united in their fight against right- wing extremism, he said.
It will be the highest assignment in the political career of Mr. Edathy, who became a Social Democratic Party (SPD) member of Bundestag in 1998.
Born on September 5 1969 in Hannover as the son of a migrant from Kerala and a German mother, Sebastian Edathyparambil had a rapid rise in the SPD since joining the party in 1990.
