Officials urge minute of silence for victims of German neo-Nazis

Feb 22, 2012, 6:07 GMT

Berlin - Officials on Tuesday urged Germans to observe a minute of silence this week when a ceremony is held to commemorate 10 people killed in hate murders by a neo-Nazi gang.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is to be the principal speaker at the ceremony on Thursday in the concert hall at Gendarmenmarkt in central Berlin, with 1,200 VIP guests including foreign diplomats attending, the presidential office in Berlin said.

Police are still investigating a 13-year crime spree by the self-styled National Socialist Underground, a far-right group believed to have killed eight ethnic Turkish shopkeepers, a Greek man and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007.

Trade unions and employers have issued a joint appeal to Germans to observe a minute of silence at noon Thursday for the 10 dead and for those injured in two bombings in Cologne blamed on the neo-Nazi group, the presidential office noted.

Operators of the Berlin and Hamburg transport systems said many trains would halt at the same time as well.

The gang of two men and a woman adopted false identities from 1998 and lived off bank robberies until last November, when the two men died in an apparent murder-suicide and the woman turned herself in.