National Socialist Underground Murders, 2000-2007

The National Socialist Underground (Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund, or NSU) was a German neo-Nazi cell responsible for a series of racially motivated killings across Germany between 2000 and 2007. Ten people were murdered and one more was critically wounded. Eight of the dead were of Turkish origin, one was Greek, and one was a German police officer. Most of the murdered men were small-business owners — kebab-shop workers, greengrocers, a tailor's-shop employee, a locksmith, an internet-cafe owner — shot in daylight at close range, primarily with a silenced Ceska (CZ) 83 pistol.

The NSU's three identified members — Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Böhnhardt, and Uwe Mundlos — grew up together in Jena, in the former East German state of Thuringia, and became involved in the far-right scene there during the 1990s. In 1998, police raided a garage the three had rented in Jena and found explosives and antisemitic material. They evaded arrest and went underground with help from far-right contacts, and the killings began two years later.

Enver Şimşek, a florist, was shot in his stall in Nuremberg on 9 September 2000 and died of his wounds two days later — the first victim. Further killings followed: Abdurrahim Özüdoğru in Nuremberg (2001), Süleyman Taşköprü in Hamburg (2001), Habil Kılıç in Munich (2001), Mehmet Turgut in Rostock (2004), İsmail Yaşar in Nuremberg (2005), Theodoros Boulgarides in Munich (2005), Mehmet Kubaşık in Dortmund (2006), and Halit Yozgat in Kassel (2006). On 25 April 2007, police officer Michèle Kiesewetter was shot and killed and her patrol partner critically wounded during their lunch break; unlike the other attacks, the motive for this one remains unclear.

For years, German investigators pursued theories that organized crime within Turkish immigrant communities was responsible, and did not investigate a far-right connection, despite witness descriptions of the gunmen that matched the eventual suspects. Relatives of the victims have accused Bavarian police of racism during the investigation and submitted a report to the United Nations; press coverage that branded the case the "döner murders" was later named Germany's Un-Word of the Year for 2011.

The case broke open on 4 November 2011, when Böhnhardt and Mundlos were found dead of apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds after a bank robbery. Police recovered service pistols taken from Kiesewetter and her partner in 2007 at the site. Zschäpe set fire to the apartment the group had shared in Zwickau and surrendered to police a week later. Investigators also found an alleged target list of 88 names. The case additionally raised questions of state complicity after it emerged that domestic-intelligence informants embedded in far-right circles had links to the group, and that the intelligence agency had destroyed related files after the killings came to light; the agency's president, Heinz Fromm, resigned in 2012 amid the ensuing criticism.

Zschäpe's trial opened on 6 May 2013 and concluded on 11 July 2018, when she was found guilty of ten counts of murder, arson, and membership in a terrorist organization, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Four co-defendants — Ralf Wohlleben, Carsten Schultze, André Eminger, and Holger Gerlach — were also convicted of supplying weapons or otherwise supporting the group, with sentences ranging from juvenile detention to ten years in prison.