Blood and Honor and Combat 18 in Dortmund

Victims’ counsel today brought important motions for evidence concerning the possible involvement of the Nazi scene from Dortmund inter alia in the murder of Mehmet Kubaşik. At the time of the NSU’s murders, a well-organized militant Nazi scene was active in Dortmund. Surrounding the band Oidoxie, there was an organized group called Streetfighting Crew“, which again was connected to a “Combat 18” group which, based on the “Blood and Honour”, aimed to start “armed struggle.” These groups were part of the nation-wide and international “Blood and Honour” network and therefore had the necessary connections to get their hands on guns, e.g. via Belgium.

One witness which is to be summoned is Sebastian Seemann, neo-Nazi and former informer of the domestic secret service. He was already questioned on 13 December 2011 and made statements concerning the build-up of the “Combat 18” cell in Dortmund by the singer of “Oidoxie”. At that time – the public was not yet discussing the “Turner diaries” – Seemann had stated that “the series of murders of Turkish and one Greek small business owners” was consistent with the description of attacks in the “Turner diaries.” He also made concrete statements concerning the possible source of the murder weapons, namely the modified Bruni which was used in several of the NSU murders and the TT33 used in the Heilbronn killing, and asked that he be given pictures of the guns in order to be able to give a more detailed statement.

Together with his good friend Michael Berger, who shot and killed three policemen in Dortmund on 16 June 2000, Seemann had taken part in gun trainings. Witness Robin Schmiemann, who in the meantime was in contact with Zschäpe via latters, stated that Seemann had incited him to commit an armed robbery on 2 February 2007 and provided him with a gun. Schmiemann used that gun to shoot at a Tunisian customer of the store he robbed.

One further aim of the motions is to find out to what extent Seemann was already in contact with the accused and/or the NSU in 1997. The build-up of a “Combat 18” cell in Dortmund in 2006, which had contacts to buy weapons, is one piece of evidence for contacts between the NSU and the militant Nazi cells in Dortmund which provided information on possible victims of attacks to the NSU. Until today, there is no other explanation for how the NSU knew about the Dortmund victim, no documents which could them staking out the environs have not been found.

Another witness to be called is the singer and front man of Nazi band “Oidoxie”, formed in 1995 in Dortmund. “Oidoxie” was part of the „Blood and Honour“ and“Combat 18“ networks, i.e. of that organization which according to the evidence so far supported “the Three” after their going underground in Saxonia. It is likely that the network was at least part of the network supporting the killers in carrying out their murders, at least with respect to that in Dortmund.

It will remain to be seen whether the court will grant these motions as well as further motions aimed at making files of investigations against these persons part of the Munich case file. If the court does consider this evidence, this would be the final death knell for the prosecution’s claim that the NSU had been an isolated group consisting of three persons and a few supporters. The court would – even more clearly than it has already done – position itself against the federal prosecutor’s office. On the other hand, the relevance of this evidence is more than clear and the court has already shown itself interested in the NSU’s connections to militant Nazi organizations such as “Blood and Honour”.

Today, the court heard a police officer from Dortmund who had noted a phone call to the police concerning the murder in Dortmund. He did not remember anything, but was certain that he had written everything down exactly as it had happened.

The court also continued the questioning of former „Thuringia Home Guard“ member and informer of the Thuringian secret service Andreas Rachhausen (see the blog post of 23 July 2014). His questioning did not lead to anything substantial. According to the leader of the political police in his home town of Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, Rachhausen was “one of the most dangerous right extremists of the time”. In his testimony, he tried to downplay his activities. Rachhausen had evaded arrest over a longer period of time by fleeing to Belgium, the United States and finally to Denmark, where he found refuge with Holocaust denier Thies Christopherson and helped Christopherson with sending out newspapers. In other words, the Nazi scene from Thuringia already had a network of contacts in Germany and several other states and was experienced in fleeing from the police by “going underground” – experience which “the Three” could benefit from via the “Thuringia Home Guard”.