The National Socialist Underground (NSU) was a right-wing terrorist underground organization, which existed from 1998 to 2011 (not later than 2001 under the designation NSU). Its three members – Uwe Mundlos (1973–2011), Uwe Böhnhardt (1977–2011) and Beate Zschäpe (born 1975) from Jena – were given cover and aided by a circle of supporters and accomplices from the extreme-right milieu.
The right-wing terror cell emerged from the milieu of the mid-1990s, the ‘Thüringer Heimatschutz’ with close links to the NPD, a fusion of militant, informally organized neonazi groups (‘Freie Kameradschaften’). Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe were members of ‘Kameradschaft Jena‘ and had already been reported to the police several times for neonazi activities. When arrest threatened in 1998, they went into hiding. The trio financed themselves by robbing banks and post offices in Saxony, Thuringia and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania; some of the stolen money was used for neo-Nazi propaganda material. Between 2000 and 2007 the trio are presumed to have murdered nine people with immigrant backgrounds out of racist motives and with the aim of 'preserving the German nation'. The victims were: Enver Şimşek, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Süleyman Taşköprü, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar, Theodoros Boulgarides, Mehmet Kubaşık and Halit Yozgat.
Two of the murders were committed in Munich, three in Nuremberg and one each in Kassel, Dortmund, Hamburg and Rostock. For a long time, investigators assumed the case was one of foreign organized crime. The press gave expression to this blanket suspicion with the discriminatory catchphrase of 'kebab murders'. It was only after the NSU was unmasked in 2011 that it became apparent that the murders were motivated by right-wing extremism. In 2004, a nail bomb assassination in Keupstraße, Cologne, other bomb attacks and the murder of a police officer in Heilbronn in 2007 are also attributed to the NSU.
On November 4, 2011, after a raid on a savings bank in Eisenach, Mundlos and Böhnhardt killed themselves to avoid imminent arrest. Beate Zschäpe handed herself in to the police in Jena on November 8, 2011. After court proceedings lasting several years, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, membership of a terrorist conspiracy and aggravated arson. In doing so, the court also established the particular gravity of the culpability.
The highly publicized trial with over 90 joint plaintiffs and 600 witnesses raised further questions about the role of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the police authorities in monitoring and prosecuting the right-wing extremist scene. Parliamentary committees of inquiry revealed glaring omissions in this area, which led to the resignation of constitutional protection officers at federal and state level and highlighted the need for fundamental reforms. But for the surviving dependents of the victims who were unjustly criminalized for a long time, the investigation of the crimes of the NSU and the public sympathy meant belated satisfaction and rehabilitation for their relatives.
