The role played by the security agencies investigating the NSU complex raised many questions that even the five-year-long NSU trial did not clarify: How was it possible for the NSU to continue its murder spree and remain undetected for years despite the fact that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution [BfV – domestic intelligence agency] had informants in the scene and despite clear evidence that the crimes were racially motivated? From which Hamburg neo-Nazis did the NSU get support?

The neo-Nazi scene in Thuringia, where the NSU was based and from which it got support, not only oriented itself on concepts from Hamburg such as Anti-Antifa or the Freie Kameradschaften, it also read terror manuals such as Eine Bewegung in Waffen. At secretly organized demonstrations and right-wing rockconcerts by Blood & Honour, the future right-wing terrorists met Hamburg neo-Nazis such as Thomas Wulff and took part in training courses run by the Deutsche Rechtsbüro.

In 2002, the Deutsche Rechtsbüro and Jürgen Rieger’s Artgemeinschaft, along with eight other neo-Nazi organizations, allegedly received a letter from the NSU containing money that they had looted from bank robberies. One such letter was found when police searched the home of the person who published the neo-Nazi magazine Der Weiße Wolf in 2012. No searches were conducted in Hamburg.

The BfV had 40 informants in the NSU’s environment on the payroll. Why the BfV, according to its own account, nevertheless had no knowledge of the NSU murders has not been fully clarified. In 2011, just a few days after the NSU came out of cover, BfV agents destroyed files on their informants, including the file of the neo-Nazi Michael See, who had been working with the BfV since 1994. See was one of the leading neo-Nazis in Thuringia in the early 1990s and published instructions for armed struggle. After the trio went underground, he reported to the BfV that they had asked him to hide them. At the time of the murder of Süleyman Taşköprü, he was active in northern Germany and organized an event there with a member of the SS and the right-wing terrorist Manfred Roeder.

During the nationwide investigation in 2006, Hamburg investigators expressly rejected the case analysis of a Bavarian profiler, according to whose assessment the perpetrators were to be sought in the extreme right. Another question that has not been clarified is why the Hamburg police consulted a psychic as part of the investigation.

Committees of inquiry into the crimes of the NSU were set up in the Bundestag and in eight state parliaments. The Hamburg Parliament, however, repeatedly rejected requests to set up a committee of inquiry and instead decided that the NSU crimes in Hamburg should be investigated by a committee of academics. This makes Hamburg the only federal state where an NSU murder was committed without a committee of inquiry.

The Taşköprü family continues to demand the establishment of a parliamentary committee of inquiry. Such a committee has more far-reaching powers than an academic investigation, such as the right to summon witnesses. As in court, these witnesses may only refuse to testify on the basis of self-incrimination; otherwise they must answer questions truthfully or risk a charge of perjury.