The Frankfurt lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz has been awarded the Ludwig Beck Prize for civil courage from the city of Wiesbaden.

The honor is associated with 10,000 euros and was presented on Friday evening.

Basay-Yildiz represented relatives of the victims of the right-wing extremist terror cell "National Socialist Underground" (NSU) in the Munich NSU trial.

The lawyer was the first addressee of the "NSU 2.0" threatening letter in 2018.

During the investigation into these death threats, which were also pronounced against relatives of the lawyer, the existence of a chat group with right-wing extremist content in a Frankfurt police station was uncovered.

The private and publicly inaccessible data were also accessed by a police computer.

The city of Wiesbaden announced that the award recognizes Basay-Yildiz's remarkable handling of right-wing terrorist threats after she stood up as a lawyer for the family of a victim of the NSU murders.

“We need to talk to each other more.

This is the only way to create trust, ”said Basay-Yildiz before the award ceremony of the German Press Agency.

"Every single civil servant called for more"

With the Ludwig Beck Prize, the state capital honors people, institutions or associations from all over the world who have campaigned with particular moral courage for the common good, peaceful coexistence of people, social justice and the basic principles of democracy and the rule of law.

A man was arrested in May as the alleged author of the "NSU 2.0" threat.

It has not yet been clarified whether he had helpers within the police force or whether he was "only" able to successfully pretend to be a police officer when making inquiries over the phone.

"The reputation of the police has been damaged so much that I believe that every single officer is required more than ever to report racist tendencies within the police," said Basay-Yildiz of the necessary moral courage within the police.

"The decent majority must act now."

Basay-Yildiz has long been demanding precise clarification. "We must not rely on politicians, as you can see in Hessen and also at the federal level," she said. “In this respect, every single police officer in this country is called upon to act courageously. There must also be more dialogue between the citizen and the police. "