The most recent statements of two police officers in the NSU (National Socialist Underground) trial imply that the intelligence agency employee Andreas Temme may have been involved in the murder of Halit Yozgat. The Constitutional Court of Hesse denies this and has blocked the release of information and hindered witness testimony.
Both police officers, Helmut W. and Jörg T. testified ten days ago at the NSU trial about the ninth of the ten suspected NSU murders. The victim was 21-year-old Halit Yozgat, who was shot on April 6, 2006 in an Internet Café in the Kassel district of Hesse, run by he and his father.
Andreas Temme, the chief undercover agent of the Hessian secret service was most probably in the Internet Café at the time the murder was committed. He attracted the attention of police because, in spite of the call for witnesses, he did not report and was found only through an extensive search. Temme was already suspected at that time of having something to do with the killing. Although Yozgat must have been killed while Temme was present, and he scarcely could have failed to see the body, he denies witnessing the killing.
Temme insists that he was only in the Internet Café by chance and for private reasons. Supposedly, he went there to chat with on Internet dating sites. He claimed that he wanted to keep this a secret from his wife. However, the inspection of his laptop, which he would have used in their apartment, revealed that he also chatted with women on such sites at home and continued to do so after the murder in Kassel.
Stefan Aust and Dirk Laabs report this in their book Homeland Security: The State and the NSU Killing Spree, which bases itself primarily on the analyses of a number of parliamentary committees. “It simply cannot be true that he went to the Internet Café because he was afraid of being discovered by his wife.”
Aust and Laabs recount that Temme also once suggested to Benjamin Gärtner, one of his informants, that they meet in this Internet café. He was a regular customer. However, Gärtner, who came out from an extreme right wing milieu, turned him down because the “owner was a Turk.” Temme’s contact with his spy has only partially become public. However, he spoke with Gärtner, who was in the city, only 50 minutes before the murder of Halit Yozgat. Neither of them, they claim, can remember what they discussed during those eleven minutes.
In the course of cross-examination, Temme repeatedly changed his story on the murder of Halit Yozgat. Since then, he has settled on the following version: after logging off his PC, he went to the reception area of the café. He claims he did not see Yozgat there and briefly went out onto the street to look around. Then, he re-entered the café and put a 50-cent coin on the desk, on which the investigators later found traces of blood.
Temme, who is 1.86 meter tall (6 foot, 1 inch), claims not to have seen the body which was found directly behind the table. A reconstruction of the murder by the police reveals that it would be virtually impossible for Temme not to have witnessed the cold blooded murder of the young Turk, allegedly by the NSU gang members Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt.
Testifying before the Munich Higher Regional Court at the NSU trial last week, Helmut W., head of the Kassel homicide division at the time of the murder, voiced his skepticism about Temme’s testimony. He “find[s] it improbable” that it happened the way Temme described, the investigator told the court. He and his colleagues could imagine two possible scenarios: Either Temme witnessed some part of the crime and remained silent about it, or he could have been involved in carrying it out.
The two policemen revealed an additional detail in the course of their testimony. On the Monday after the crime, in a conversation with a female secret service agent, Temme described the model of the pistol that was used in the murder. It was a Ceska 83, the same type of weapon that was used in other so-called “kebab murders” committed by the fascist gang.
Temme maintains that he read this information somewhere. In actual fact, the media did not release any information about the murder weapon until the afternoon of that same day. Indeed, he was brought to the police on that same Monday and the conversation with his colleague took place shortly before that. This testimony coincides with a memo on Temme’s visits from the year 2006.
Meanwhile, Temme himself now insists that he first found out about the murder weapon from the police and then told his colleague about it afterwards. He is the only one who defends this version of events.
The obvious contradictions and repeated changes in Temme’s testimony have kept the police investigation team busy since 2006. There can be only two reasons for this, according to the Thomas Bliwier, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, who spoke on the radio station Hessischen Rundfunk. It should be assumed that Temme not only must have seen Yozgat’s corpse but also that Temme has knowledge of the crime or who carried it out. “He is implicated as the offender or else he made observations and is not telling,” said the attorney.
To what extent Temme took direct part in the crime, whether Mundlos and Böhnhardt were at the scene of the crime at all remains unclear, not least of all because his superiors and the entire staff of the intelligence agencies are protecting Temme.
Even the circumstances in which Temme was taken on at the regional Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) more than 20 years ago appear bizarre. Back in his home village, he had been known as “little Adolf.” When he encountered the intelligence agency, he was a member of the Rifle Association, which he left shortly after the NSU murder in Kassel, as well as a motorcycle club. Through his membership in that, he became acquainted with the boss of “Hell’s Angels” in Kassel. However, he rose from observer at the Hessen LfV to head undercover agent.
After the NSU murder in Kasel took place, the police searched Temme’s house and found a large collection of Nazi literature and copies of Hilter’s “Mein Kampf,” which have since been destroyed. Temme also possessed three pistols and a revolver as well as a baseball bat, a club and a two-sided knife.
Nevertheless, he enjoys the full support of the authorities. Police investigations have met with repeated obstacles. Documents were blacked out (for example, those of his subordinate Gärtner), testimony has been denied, and so forth.
The police sought to question Temme’s subordinates. In addition to Gärtner, Temme commanded five other men in the “Islamism” division. The security officer of the Hessian secret service at that time, a man by the name of Hess, refused questioning and denied access to Temme’s security file and his official statements about his visit to the Internet Café.
When the police turned to the Hessian Interior Ministry in order to compel Temme’s subordinates to submit to questioning, the interior minister at that time and the current state Prime Minister, Volker Bouffier (Christian Democratic Union) denied the request.
Temme was disciplined for the first time two days before the first report about him appeared in the newspaper, and prosecuted more than four months after the murder of Halit Yozgat. In the meantime, proceedings against him have been dropped. Temme is now doing office work and continues to receive his salary.
Both the German parliamentary Investigation Committee into the NSU and the current NSU trial in Munich are intent on suppressing the involvement of the intelligence agencies in the NSU murder. Nevertheless such involvement becomes ever clearer the longer the trial continues.
The destruction of hundreds of documents, refusal to give testimony, gaps in memory, mysterious deaths, etc., are being used to hush up the direct participation of the state in the NSU murders. The secret services operate as a state within the state, free from any democratic control and legal accountability.
