Politicians and journalists sometimes call the actions of the NSU an "unprecedented series of crimes". But the assassination attempts by the Zwickau terrorist cell on migrants are not entirely without precedent. As early as 1980, a neo-Nazi gang that had roamed the country bombing and murdering was busted in Germany:the "German Action Groups". And as tagesschau.de reported, there could even have been a connection between the groups - in the person of the right-wing extremist Manfred Roeder.
Two young men are burned to death in the Vietnamese home
It is the night of August 22, 1980. More than 200 people live in a residential home for Vietnamese refugees on Halskestrasse in Hamburg-Billbrook, otherwise more of an industrial area. A car stops in front of the property that night. Two 50-year-old men and a young woman are sitting in the car. They belong to the right-wing extremist terrorist cell "German Action Groups".
"Foreigners out" they spray on the facade, then ignite three Molotov cocktails. They hurl the incendiary devices through a window on the mezzanine floor of the dormitory, get back in the car and roar away. Fire breaks out in a room of the asylum accommodation. Two young men are sleeping there:22-year-old Ngoc Nguyen and 18-year-old Anh Lan Do. The two Vietnam refugees have no chance. They suffer terrible burns before neighbors can get them out of the apartment. One of the two dies the morning after the fire, the other succumbs to his severe injuries a few days later.
Since the rest of the building was hardly affected by the fire, the city of Hamburg continued to operate the refugee home.
Arrested a few days after the double murder
The perpetrators will soon be caught. They had left a clear mark on the foreigners' accommodation:the color they used for their slogan there had already been used a few days earlier in another spray campaign. A witness wrote down her license plate number. Eleven days after the attack in Hamburg, the police arrested the suspects in southern Lower Saxony. As it turns out, the "German Action Groups" committed other attacks on foreigners' homes, in which people were injured. They also attacked an exhibition on Nazi history and were apparently planning bank robberies.
Perpetrators from Baden-Württemberg and Bremerhaven
The two male assassins come from Baden-Württemberg, their 24-year-old friend comes from Bremerhaven. In Hamburg they were probably just passing through at the time. There they first try to set fire to a school. The attack on the Vietnamese home came after reading a newspaper report about asylum seekers in Hamburg, as "Zeit-Online" writes in a report about the background.
The police identify the lawyer Manfred Roeder as the leader of the troop. At the beginning of 1982 there was a trial for forming a terrorist organization. Roeder, who cannot be proven to have been involved in the crime, was sentenced to 13 years in prison as the ringleader. The three directly involved receive prison sentences up to life imprisonment.
Was Roeder a role model for the NSU?
Even after his release from prison, Roeder repeatedly stands out as a right-wing extremist. He later received further penalties for hate speech. Among other things, he is in court in Erfurt in 1996. Apparently, the later NSU murderers Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt as well as their cronies Ralf Wohlleben and Andre K. were among the visitors to the trial at the time. The NSU probably had at least one example of their crimes. Tagesschau.de reports on other connections between the "National Socialist Underground" and Roeder as well as other possible "models" of the Zwickau terrorist cell.