Five German police officers are suspected of operating a neo-Nazi cell within the Frankfurt police force after a German-Turkish lawyer reported she had received a message from the group threatening to kill her two-year-old daughter.
The four men and one woman have been suspended from the force on suspicion of sending the note to Seda Basay-Yildiz earlier this summer, and are also suspected of exchanging far-right messages in a chat group.
The message, which was faxed to Ms Basay-Yildiz’s office, said she should “p*** off” while she was “still alive” and if she stayed in Germany her daughter would be “slaughtered”.
The message included her home address, her daughter’s name and age, and was signed “NUS 2.0” which is believed to allude to German neo-Nazi terrorist group the National Socialist Underground.
The group, discovered in 2011, committed at least 10 murders, mostly of immigrants of Turkish, Kurdish and Greek descent between 2000 and 2006, and they also killed a police officer and committed 14 bank robberies.
Ms Basay-Yildiz was one of the lawyers who represented one of the victim’s families in the five-year trial of the last surviving member of the NSU, Beate Zschäpe, who was jailed for life in July this year.
She received the threat to her daughter’s life just weeks afterwards.
Ms Basay-Yildiz said she has occasionally received as many as 50 threats or insults per day because of her work, but that in this instance she was immediately suspicious.
According to Bild, she said: “My daughter was mentioned by name and age, and my address was on the fax. Normally, my data is not publicly available – this can only be queried by an authority.”
The newspaper said initial internal investigations had already led to the discovery of the far-right WhatsApp group used by the police officers, in which members had exchanged pictures of Hitler, swastikas and made remarks about foreigners.
In October offices at Frankfurt’s 1st District Police station were searched, computers and mobile telephones confiscated, resulting in a preliminary suspension of those involved.
At this point the investigating officers found a connection to the threatening letter – one of the officer’s computers had reportedly been used to look up details on Ms Basay-Yildiz without there being any reason to do so.
She expressed frustration the police had not kept her informed earlier in the investigation, but told Bild: “It’s good that the police are investigating and exposing everything in their own ranks.”
