More on Tino Brandt and the „Thuringia Homeguard“

Today, the court once more heard the main contact officer of Tino Brandt, at the time leader of the “Thuringia Homeguard” (THS) and informer of the Thuringia interior domestic secret service.
The main topic was once more the support given by Brandt and other members of the THS to Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt after they had gone underground. The various reports written by the witness after meetings with Brandt show once more that several “comrades” both from Jena and from Chemnitz were involved in this support and that early on, the secret service had the necessary information (concerning e.g. contacts and phone numbers used) in order to look for and find “the Three” in Chemnitz.

Other than that, the witness, by now pensioned, mostly feigned memory gaps, particularly when the actions of the secret service concerning right wing crimes were at issue. As reported, the police had complained that the service often warned its sources of impending searches. In the federal parliamentary inquiry, the witness had stated that roughly 30 investigations had been started against Brandt, of which none led to a conviction, but that this was a fact one could “live with”. Today he claimed not to remember what he had meant by that statement. Asked about statements from other sources that the service had financed a visit of Brandt to Nazis in the United States, the witness again claimed not to remember.

He also claimed to have no knowledge of attempts by the secret service to recruit a source under the code name of Delhi – the city in which accused Carsten Schultze was born and tried to evade questions on that issue.

What became apparent once more was that the secret service – at the very least that of Thuringia – had a very close, almost friend-like connection to its Nazi sources. Brandt was not made to tell anything he did not want to. The service was also well aware that among the supporters of the three who had gone underground was the “Blood & Honour”-scene in Chemnitz. Quite clearly, no honest attempt was made to arrest Zschäpe, Böhnhardt and Mundlos, let alone to disband the militant Nazi organizations and networks in Thuringia.