Neo-Nazi registry

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has announced plans for a new database to be used by federal and state intelligence services to track far-right extremists. The move follows widespread criticism of the country's security agencies after they failed over nearly a decade to detect the deadly activities of a neo-Nazi terror group.

The new registry will be modeled on a similar database for Islamist extremists created in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

"We want to use this idea, which has been very successful over the past 10 years to foil Islamist terror attacks, against domestic terrorist structures," Friedrich told reporters.

The minister also said that the government had scheduled talks for Friday with the country's 16 state interior and justice ministers on how to improve cooperation in the future.

Sloppy surveillance

Germany has a federal domestic intelligence service, known as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, but all 16 states also have their own police and domestic intelligence agencies, resulting in a lack of coordination, which critics say helped the neo-Nazi cell remain undetected until last week.

The group is suspected of murdering nine immigrants and a policewoman over the past decade.

The investigation into the activities of the National Socialist Underground, or NSU, has led to a nationwide reactivation of previously unsolved crimes, including suspected terrorist attacks in Cologne and Dusseldorf.

The publicist and former chairman of the National Council of Jews in Germany, Michel Friedman, has accused the nation's interior ministers and spy agencies of what he called an "insufferable pretense of innocence."

Investigation uncovers hit list

The outcry has grown even louder after it became clear that a number of public figures, including members of parliament and Muslim community leaders, were reportedly named on a neo-Nazi hit list.

The case has also revived the debate about banning the right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD), after a previous attempt to do so was struck down by Germany's highest court in 2003. The court ruled at the time that the presence of informants paid by the intelligence agency inside the party blurred the lines of responsibility, undermining the culpability of the organization.

But according to German daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, there are now up to 100 informants in the NPD today, significantly more than in 2003, when 15 percent of the party's members were informants.

"It's a significant number," the paper quotes a security source as saying.

Germany's Turkish community on Thursday called for a "summit on racism." The head of the Turkish Community of Germany, Kenan Kolat, said in a televised interview that all relevant forces in society must act together. The murders, he said, showed that racism in Germany was still an issue.

Author: Gregg Benzow (AP, AFP, dpa)
Editor: Michael Lawton