Berlin, January 28,2012: Indian-origin MP Sebastian Edathy will head a parliamentary inquiry committee, which has been set up here to probe a string of racist motivated murders carried out across the country by a neo-Nazi cell evading detection for more than a decade. In a rare show of unity, all parties represented in the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, voted unanimously for the setting up of the eleven-member committee on Thursday, which will probe why the intelligence agencies and security authorities failed to prevent the murder of nine Turkish and Greek entrepreneurs and a woman police officer between 2000 and 2007. The committee is expected to reveal how the right extremist group National Socialist Underground (NSU), could operate undetected from its base in the eastern German state of Thuringia.
It will also try to unravel the structure of the neo-Nazi cell and to establish whether it received any support from members of the intelligence services. The committee will do everything to restore public confidence in the constitutional state, which has been shaken by the revelations that the neo-Nazi cell unleashed its terror without being detected for such a long period, Edathy told the Bundestag during a debate before the vote. Its main goal is to make sure that such crimes will not happen again, he said. Unlike in former parliamentary inquiries, there will be no conflict among the political parties this time because they are united in their fight against right wing extremism, he said.
“At stake is jointly defending the constitutional state’s ability to function,” he said in a TV interview.
Edathy, 43, will formally take over as chairman of the inquiry committee at its opening session today.
It will be the highest assignment in the political career of Edathy, who became a Social Democratic Party (SPD) member of the Bundestag in 1998.
It will also try to unravel the structure of the neo-Nazi cell and to establish whether it received any support from members of the intelligence services. The committee will do everything to restore public confidence in the constitutional state, which has been shaken by the revelations that the neo-Nazi cell unleashed its terror without being detected for such a long period, Edathy told the Bundestag during a debate before the vote. Its main goal is to make sure that such crimes will not happen again, he said. Unlike in former parliamentary inquiries, there will be no conflict among the political parties this time because they are united in their fight against right wing extremism, he said. “At stake is jointly defending the constitutional state’s ability to function,” he said in a TV interview.
Edathy, 43, will formally take over as chairman of the inquiry committee at its opening session today.
It will be the highest assignment in the political career of Edathy, who became a Social Democratic Party (SPD) member of the Bundestag in 1998.