Between September 2000 and April 2006, the far-right terror group National Socialist Underground (NSU) committed nine cold-blooded, premeditated murders of migrants across Germany. On September 9, 2000, flower shop owner Enver Şimşek was shot at his stand in Nuremberg. It marked the beginning of a ruthless killing spree.
A Murder Series Spanning Germany
Abdurrahim Özüdoğru was killed in his shawarma restaurant in Nuremberg; weeks later Süleyman Taşköprü was murdered in Hamburg. The group used the same weapon—a Ceska 83 pistol—in all nine murders. Habil Kılıç was shot in his cigar shop in Munich, Mehmet Turgut was killed in Rostock, and both İsmail Yaşar and Theodoros Boulgarides were murdered in 2005. The final two victims were Mehmet Kubaşık in Dortmund and Halit Yozgat in Kassel in April 2006.
Bombings and the Police Murder That Solved Everything
Beyond the shootings, NSU was responsible for multiple bomb attacks. A letter bomb exploded in Cologne in May 2004, and nail bomb attacks targeted the Keupstraße district. In 2004, Gençay Özcan was seriously wounded.
What finally unraveled the entire case was the murder of police officer Michèle Kiesewetter in Heilbronn on April 25, 2007. Her colleague Martin Volz was seriously wounded. When the murder weapon was later examined, it proved identical to the weapon used in the earlier murders—the breakthrough that cracked the case wide open.
Police Pursued the Wrong Leads
German police made monumental errors in this investigation. Instead of examining a racist motive, officers suspected organized crime or a "pizza mafia" was behind the murders. The media dubbed it the "pizza murder series"—a grave disrespect to the victims and their families.
The victims' families knew from the start these were racist murders, but police dismissed them. Journalists from the newspaper Hürriyet wrote in 2006: "According to German police, the killer is from the Turkish mafia—according to Turks, it's a racist old German policeman."
Police treated all witnesses with the same brush as "Turks," despite victims coming from different communities—Turks, Kurds, and Greeks. The racist narrative that victims' families weren't cooperating ended up criminalizing the victims themselves.
The Breakthrough Came Abruptly
The murder spree ended suddenly on November 4, 2011. Following a failed bank robbery in Eisenach, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt took their own lives in a camper van. Beate Zschäpe set fire to their shared apartment in Zwickau and later turned herself in to police.
Investigation of the fire revealed extensive evidence: weapons, a manifesto video, and documentation of all the murders. The German public was shocked—both by the killings and by the complete systemic failure of security agencies.
A Mammoth Trial Lasting Five Years
On May 6, 2013, one of Germany's largest trials since World War II began. Beate Zschäpe was the sole surviving member of the core group and faced charges for ten murders and membership in a terrorist organization.
The trial continued for over five years. On July 11, 2018, Zschäpe was sentenced to life imprisonment for complicity in ten murders and membership in a terrorist organization. The sentence became final in 2022.
The NSU Complex: Institutional Racism in the Security System
The case became known as the "NSU Complex"—a term reflecting the interweaving of far-right terror, institutional racism, and failure by German security authorities. Multiple parliamentary committees attempted to investigate the role of the constitutional protection agency and possible connections to informants.
Victims' families continue fighting for full answers. Many questions remain unanswered: Who supported the group underground? Why were archives destroyed? What role did constitutional protection informants play in the NSU network?
The NSU Complex demonstrates how institutional racism can prevent crime investigation—with deadly consequences for victims and traumatic consequences for families wrongly suspected for years.
