German neo-Nazi suspect charged with hate crimes, death threats

BERLIN (AA) – German prosecutors announced Thursday that they are pursuing hate crimes against a right-wing extremist accused of sending dozens of death threat letters signed with the neo-Nazi alias “NSU 2.0”.

The 53-year-old Alexander Horst M. has been charged with incitement to racial hatred, making insults, threats and spreading symbols of unconstitutional organizations, Frankfurt prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Between 2018 and 2021, the suspect sent more than a hundred threat letters to several politicians, human rights activists and lawyers, including lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz, who represented families of the Turkish victims killed by the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi terror group.

During a search in his house in May, the police seized various documents and electronic devices as evidence, which included far-right propaganda and images of child pornography, according to local media reports.

But the investigation could not determine how the suspect obtained the addresses and other personal information of the prominent politicians and lawyers from the official records.

The threat letters sent by the suspect were signed “NSU 2.0”, a reference to the far-right terror group NSU.

The shadowy neo-Nazi group killed 10 people, including eight Turkish and one Greek immigrant as well as a police officer, between 2000 and 2007, but the murders have remained unresolved.

While recent revelations have shown that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency had dozens of informants who had contacts with the NSU members, officials insisted that they had no prior information about the NSU terror cell and the killings.