German panels to study how police overlooked neo-Nazi group (correction)

Jan 26, 2012, 15:38 GMT

Berlin - Two parliamentary inquiries will investigate why 34 separate German police and intelligence agencies were unable to get solid leads on a murderous neo-Nazi gang that killed 10 people before it collapsed last year, lawmakers voted Thursday.

A November suicide of two bank robbers led police to the eventual realization that the men - along with a female accomplice who is under arrest - had made up a right-wing group that was responsible for a series of murders of immigrants starting in 2000.

The Bundestag, Germany's national legislature, unanimously voted to establish one inquiry. It also recommended the panel consider reforms for the police and intelligence agencies of the 16 states, as well as for their two national counterparts.

In the home state of the neo-Nazi trio, Thuringia, the state assembly unanimously appointed a local parliamentary inquiry.

It will study what is seen as the worst intelligence failure, by the state anti-subversion department, which lost sight of the trio - Uwe Boehnhardt, Uwe Mundlos and Beate Zschaepe - who had met as teenagers in a far-right gang in the industrial city of Jena.

Martina Renner, a Left Party state assemblywoman in Thuringia, said: 'The failure of the authorities began here.'

The trio adopted fake identities from about 1998, posing as law-abiding citizens while conducting a series of intricately planned robberies and assassination-style killings. Eight Turkish shopkeepers, a Greek man and a policewoman were killed.

Minorities have alleged police racism, because detectives assumed that Turkish organized crime groups were behind the killings.

Claims of responsibility from the self-styled National Socialist Underground were anonymously mailed to authorities in November, possibly by Zschaepe, or by one of at least 11 rightists suspected of supporting the group.