A series of right-wing extremist threatening letters to mosques is occupying the police and public prosecutor's office in Osnabrück. There are now 33 cases of threatening and insulting letters that have been sent to Muslim communities nationwide – eleven of them in Lower Saxony alone. A few Christian communities were also threatened.
Most recently, a mosque in Hanover received a threatening letter signed "NSU 2.0". It said: "Your snack is just the beginning. We'll be back.« An arson attack had been carried out on a restaurant at the mosque a few weeks earlier. No one was injured. However, there are no indications that the arson attack and the threatening letter are related.
Recep Bilgen, chairman of the Islamic Community Milli Görüs (IGMG) Hanover, posted the threatening letter on Twitter and wrote: "State security must conduct more intensive research here." With »NSU 2.0«, the senders make a reference to the right-wing extremist terrorist group NSU (»National Socialist Underground«). Between 2000 and 2007, its members murdered eight Turkish-born and one Greek-born small business owner, as well as a police officer.
According to the ministry, investigators assume that the author of the letters is always the same perpetrator. However, they do not yet want to name a specific suspect. Unknown persons are being investigated for incitement to hatred, insults, threats, defamation and the use of anti-constitutional symbols such as swastikas.
The Osnabrück authorities are responsible for the investigations because members of a family from Osnabrück have always been named as the alleged sender since 2018. "We assume that this family is to be discredited with the letters," said police spokesman Jannis Gervelmeyer.
Of the eleven threatening letters in Lower Saxony, five went to addresses in the city of Osnabrück, according to the police, and communities in Bramsche (Osnabrück district) and Diepholz district were also affected. The Ditib community in Göttingen had first received such a threatening letter in November 2022 and then again in May 2023. At the end of July, the letter to the mosque in Hanover followed.
him/dpa