German MPs demand tighter neo-Nazi surveillance after ethnic Turk deaths

PanARMENIAN.Net - German MPs have demanded much tighter surveillance of neo-Nazi activities, after investigating a notorious series of murders targeting ethnic Turks, BBC News said.

MPs said Germany's police and justice officials must exchange intelligence on neo-Nazis, improve training and recruit more ethnic minorities. Their report condemned "major failures" by security services who had not suspected a violent neo-Nazi cell.

An alleged member of the cell, Beate Zschaepe, went on trial in May. The cell is accused of 10 murders in Germany, spanning seven years.

The mishandling of the case triggered much criticism, focusing on the failure to explore a racist motive and the initial suspicions about the victims' relatives and friends. It also emerged that the police had used unreliable undercover informers.

The MPs in a cross-party special committee made 47 recommendations, highlighting lessons to be learnt from the blunders.

The committee chairman, Sebastian Edathy of the Social Democrats (SPD), called the blunders "a historically unprecedented disaster". He handed the 1,000-page report to Norbert Lammert, president of the Bundestag - the lower house of parliament.

"The danger of militant neo-Nazis must never again be underestimated," he said, adding that the threat from such groups had even been "trivialised" sometimes.

"I'm pretty sure that, if a leading police investigator had had a Turkish background, investigating authorities would not have taken six years before seriously considering the possibility that racism was the motive," he said.