Germany sets up third major inquiry into neo-Nazi murders

Feb 8, 2012, 11:22 GMT

Berlin - Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet appointed a new commission of inquiry Wednesday into a decade-long murder wave by a neo-Nazi gang that targeted Turkish immigrant shopkeepers in Germany.

It is the third panel appointed to discover the reasons for intelligence failures that enabled the gang - two men and a woman - to shoot 10 people dead at point blank range starting in 2000.

Like two separate parliamentary inquiries, the four-man panel will scrutinize 34 domestic intelligence and police agencies, operating on the federal level and across Germany's 16 states.

Issues include whether secret agents knew about the hate crimes but shut an eye to them, or even helped the neo-Nazis stay hidden.

Germany has set up the three interlocking inquiries to cope with a thicket of secrecy and state independence laws that would make it difficult for a single inquiry to function.

A parliamentary inquiry in Berlin is set to begin its work Thursday. Another group of legislators, in Thuringia state, is studying how the neo-Nazis, who came from the eastern state, evaded local surveillance.

The cabinet-appointed panel, which is backed by all 16 states, consists of former security officials with deep connections in the intelligence community who are expected to be able to delve into highly classified documents in all the states.

The neo-Nazi group collapsed in November, when its two male members died in an apparent suicide pact and the third, Beate Zschaepe, 36, turned herself in.

Police are also holding five suspected supporters from Germany's far-right, anti-immigrant movement.