Timeline: Far-right attacks in Germany

Germany’s intelligence agency estimates that far-right linked crimes rose by 3 percent in 2018.

Far-right groups demonstrate following the 75th anniversary of the WW2 bombings in Dresden, Germany, February 15, 2020. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke
Far-right groups demonstrate following the 75th anniversary of the WWII bombings in Dresden, Germany, in February 2020 [Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters]

At least nine people were shot and killed on Wednesday by an attacker with suspected far-right links in an overnight rampage in a German city. 

The attack was carried out at two shisha lounges in Hanau, a town not far from Frankfurt. Police are trying to identify the victims, some of whom were believed to be migrants from Turkey. 

The suspected 43-year-old attacker and his mother were found dead in his apartment early on Thursday.

There have been a number of far-right attacks in recent years in Germany, with violence rising sharply in 2015 when the country took in more than one million migrants.

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The German domestic intelligence agency estimated that the number of violent crimes with far-right elements rose by 3 percent in 2018, although attacks on centres for asylum seekers fell after a spike in 2015 and 2016.

Earlier this month, German police arrested 12 men on suspicion of involvement in a far-right plot to overthrow the political order by means of targeted attacks.

Here is a timeline including recent far-right attacks that took place in Germany:

  • February 20, 2020: A 43-year-old gunman kills at least nine people in a shooting rampage in Hanau, a town near Frankfurt. The gunman is suspected to have had far-right views. After a huge manhunt, his body was found next to his mother’s.

  • October 9, 2019: A gunman who denounced Jews opens fire outside a German synagogue in the eastern city of Halle on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, killing two people as he live streams his attack. The attacker, a 27-year-old German, fatally shoots a woman outside the synagogue and a man inside a nearby kebab shop.

  • June 2, 2019: Pro-immigration German politician Walter Luebcke is found lying in a pool of blood outside his home in the state of Hesse. Stephan Ernst, a German far-right sympathiser initially confesses to the crime and later retracts his confession. Luebcke was hated by the far right because he defended Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s 2015 decision to accept refugees.

  • July 11, 2018: A member of a German neo-Nazi gang is jailed for life for her part in the murders of 10 people during a campaign of racially-motivated violence. Beate Zschaepe was part of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), whose members killed eight Turks, a Greek man and a German policewoman from 2000 to 2007. An official report later says police had “massively underestimated” the risk of far-right violence and that missteps had allowed the cell to go undetected.
Source: Al Jazeera, News Agencies