The arrest of the alleged author of the threatening letters NSU 2.0 is still one of the greatest successes of the investigation in recent years.
For the police it was like a liberation after it became known that the accused, a 53-year-old man from Berlin, is not one of them.
For two long years there was a heavy suspicion that it was a police officer who was sending hateful messages and threats to various public figures.
This fear was not confirmed. But at least until the end of the investigation, a residual doubt remains: Although the letters do not come from the ranks of the police, officials may have contributed - consciously or unconsciously. Depending on whether the investigators' hypothesis proves true, that employees in districts in Frankfurt and Wiesbaden have had data stolen from them by a kind of trickery. Or, the even worse variant, that civil servants, perhaps just one, from a personal relationship, actively helped in obtaining the sensitive information.
The greater the distance from which one looks at this case, the clearer it is what deep marks it has actually left - including general uncertainty about how widespread right-wing extremism and hatred of those who think differently are now. Viewed positively, this case certainly also harbors opportunities. It shows that, as a result, the judiciary works. This includes that the public prosecutor's office remains open to new knowledge, actually considers the unthinkable to be possible. This is the only way to lead investigations to a proper result, at the end of which hopefully there will be a police beyond all doubt.
Such a signal is urgently needed. First and foremost for the police themselves. Some may have almost forgotten that it all began with the NSU 2.0 threatening letters and the chat group that was discovered in the 1st Frankfurt police station. It would be all the more desirable if, with the end of the investigation, peace finally returned to the authority and its environment. The police don't need any further investigations against themselves. They really need the strength for other tasks.