Berlin police arrest suspect for neo-Nazi death threats

By Oliver Towfigh Nia

BERLIN (AA) - A 53-year-old German man was arrested in Berlin for his alleged role in sending more than 100 far-right death threats, including those signed with the neo-Nazi alias "NSU 2.0," authorities said Tuesday.

The Frankfurt public prosecutor's office announced late Monday evening that the unidentified suspect, who had already been convicted for other offenses, including far-right criminal ones, was arrested at his apartment in Berlin.

The unemployed man is accused of having sent a series of threatening letters with inciting, insulting, and threatening content since August 2018.

The threats were directed at state and federal parliamentarians, human rights activists, artists, and Frankfurt-based lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz, who had represented co-plaintiffs in the murder trial of the neo-Nazi terrorist group the National Socialist Underground (NSU).

The threatening letters were signed "NSU 2.0" -- a neo-Nazi alias.

According to authorities, there had been 115 threatening letters linked to the "NSU 2.0" signature.

They had been addressed to dozens of people and institutions in nine German states as well as neighboring Austria.

The NSU terror group killed 10 people, including eight Turkish and one Greek immigrant as well as a female police officer, between 2000 and 2007, but the murders have remained unresolved.

The German public first learned of the NSU’s existence and its role in the murders in 2011, when two members -- Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Bohnhardt -- died after an unsuccessful bank robbery and police found guns and extreme right-wing literature in their apartment.

Until 2011, police and intelligence services had ruled out any racial motives for the murders and instead treated migrant families as suspects.

While recent revelations have shown that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency had dozens of informants who had contacts with the NSU suspects, officials claim they had no prior information about the NSU terror cell and its suspected role in the killings.