The public prosecutor's office in Hanau is investigating three people who are said to have financially damaged the Institute for Tolerance and Civil Courage.

The investigation is being conducted because of the "initial suspicion of infidelity", the public prosecutor announced on Wednesday.

The cause was a criminal complaint.

In order to secure evidence, officers of the criminal police searched "objects" at eight locations in Hanau, Rodenbach and Bonn on the orders of the Hanau District Court.

Luise Glaser-Lotz

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Main-Kinzig district.

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According to prosecutor Lisa Pohlmann, the investigation is at a very early stage.

The press release expressly refers to the presumption of innocence that applies to the accused.

The accusation is made that the association's funds were transferred to third-party accounts without authorization and thus used for non-statutory purposes.

Pohlmann did not want to confirm whether the allegation was directed against club members.

However, depending on the situation, that is to be expected.

Because of the extensive searches, it can also be assumed that higher sums of money were involved that were embezzled.

Pohlmann says the investigations were made public early on to prevent confusion with the Hanau February 19 initiative.

After the searches, there could have been corresponding rumors.

The Institute for Tolerance and Civil Courage initially called itself “19.

February Hanau".

Like the February 19 initiative, it is one of the private organizations that formed after the attack on February 19, 2020 that left nine dead.

The February 19 initiative is the best known, among other things because it is intensively involved in investigating the crime in an investigative committee of the state parliament and often goes public with the concerns of the victims' relatives.

According to its own definition, the Institute for Tolerance and Civil Courage is committed to an “open society with tolerance and civil courage, against right-wing extremism and racism”.

According to publications on the Internet, the aim is to offer the victims' families a platform in particular and to help ensure that an attack like the one on February 19, 2020 does not happen again.

The club's logo features nine blue flowers, one for each fatality.

A white flower stands for Alptug Sözen.

The then seventeen-year-old Hanau Mustafa Alptug Sözen rescued a man from a track bed at the Ostendstrasse S-Bahn station in Frankfurt in November 2018.

The young man himself died in the process.

Honored with several awards

For its commitment, the association was honored by the SPD Hessen-Süd with its honorary award for groups.

He also received the special prize of the Hessian Integration Prize.

The association was founded by seven members of the Hanau Foreigners' Advisory Board as well as relatives of the victims and eyewitnesses of the terrorist attack. Ferdi Ilkhan is the chairman.

Initially, the association used rooms in the municipal house of crafts on Schlossplatz.

According to Selma Ilkhan-Yilmaz, founding member of the association, member of the Foreigners’ Advisory Board and city councilor of the parliamentary group Wir Sind Hanau (WSH) and Hanauer Bürger Union (HBU), the association’s activities are now digital.

There is no longer a fixed location.

Funding is mainly provided by public project funds.

On the advice of a lawyer, the association did not comment on the investigation, according to Ilkhan-Yilmaz.

However, the allegations are not true.