A series of neo-Nazi murders across Germany shows the urgency of banning the country’s largest right-extremist party, Germany’s top Jewish leader said.
Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the DPA news agency that the neo-Nazi “flagship,” the National Democratic Party of Germany, must be “sunk, politically and legally.”
His comments followed the Nov. 13 arrest of a 37-year-old man in Hamburg who is suspected of belonging to the National Socialist Underground, a relatively new organization thought to be responsible for what is being called Germany’s biggest wave of far-right violence since World War II.
The NSU is suspected of involvement in the murders of eight Turkish immigrants and one Greek between 2000 and 2006, and the killing of a police officer in 2007.
German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told journalists that the group represented a “new form of terrorism” in Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel referred to the alleged activities of the NSU as “shocking.”
Several mainstream political leaders this week joined the call to ban the National Democratic Party of Germany. Attempts to ban the party failed in 2003 after it was revealed that government informants were involved in inciting some of the allegedly criminal activities. — jta