Germany: Planners of bomb attack on Jewish cultural centre on trial
01 January 2005
In 2003, chief public prosecutor Kay Nehm initiated proceedings against several members of the Munich based neo-fascist organisation
Kameradschaft Süd ("Comradeship South") on grounds of forming a terrorist organisation. In a raid on 10 September 2003, the police found 14 kg of explosives that the group had planned to use in a bomb attack on a Jewish community centre in Munich (see
Statewatch Vol. 13 no 5). The attacks were apparently planned by a sub-group of the around 40-strong
Kameradschaft Süd, which called itself
Aktionsbündnis Süddeutschland ("Action Alliance South Germany"). Two separate trials have now started against nine of the group's members in the Munich regional court.
Martin Wiese and other members of the organisation had been under observation by the Bavarian regional secret service branch, which had deployed an informant and discovered the group's link to the Polish explosives market. However, research by the investigative television journal
Kontraste has shown that the secret service was apparently unaware that Wiese and his colleagues had actually obtained explosives in May 2003 and started constructing a pipe bomb. It was to be used at the laying of the foundations of the Jewish cultural centre in Munich on the 65th anniversary of the
Reichskristallnacht. The group had also compiled a "hit list" with several possible targets, including a Munich synagogue, asylum seekers' homes, the local MP Franz Maget (
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD), journalists and anti-fascists. The list was found together with hand grenades, pistols and 14 kg explosives, including 1.7 kg TNT, during the police raid.
On 6 October 2004, a first trial started against three men (aged 18, 22 and 37) and two women (aged 18 and 19), members of the
Aktionsbüro Süd. Their trial is still taking place in closed court because some of them were still juveniles at the time of the accusations, which range from combat training, procuring weapons and explosives and compiling hit lists. A second trial against Martin Wiese (28) Alexander Maetzing (28) and two other men, on grounds of forming a terrorist organisation started on 24 November 2004. Wiese is the main focus in this trial and he has previously been involved in racist attacks, fascist demonstrations and networking amongst skinhead groups in Germany. He is seen as the ringleader of
Aktionsbüro Süd, which he allegedly set up in 2002.
Last year it emerged that a secret service informant had infiltrated the
Aktionsbüro Süd, which Wiese's defence lawyers are trying to use as a mitigating feature: the informant Didier Magnien was the leader of the far-right
Parti Nationaliste Française et Européenne in 1997 and according to the indictment, he was involved in buying weapons for Wiese's group in eastern Germany. According to Wiese's defence lawyer Anja Seul, he also "inspired" Wiese in the attacks (see
Statewatch volume 13 issue 5). During the first trial days, Wiese's "comrade" Alexander Maetzing tried to downplay the group's intentions, calling the group's weapons and combat training a "jamboree" and declaring that "none of us can be called an anti-Semite". He claimed Wiese had been the driving force behind the planned bombing of the ceremony on the Jakobsplatz in Munich.
Police and Bavaria's interior minister Günther Beckstein (
Christlich Soziale Union - CSU) have been criticised for having ignored and withheld information from the targets of the fascist group - the Jewish community, left-wing politicians and anti-fascists - whose details and whereabouts had been systematically compiled by group members for the purpose of a serious attack. A female member of the
Kameradschaft Süd who worked at the Post Office had gathered information on a Munich based Peace Bureau as well as the socialist party (
Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus - PDS) through their bank acco