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Portraits of the victims of the Hanau attack in Frankfurt am Main (archive)
Photo: Armando Babani / AFP
On the evening of February 19, 2020, a 43-year-old shot nine young people at six different crime scenes in Hanau: eight men and one woman;
he injured six other people.
The assassin had previously published pamphlets and videos with conspiracy theories and racist views on the Internet.
He pulled the trigger at least 47 times that night - in three bars, on the street, in a parking lot, in a kiosk in the city center and in Hanau-Kesselstadt, two and a half kilometers away.
He wanted to target people with foreign roots.
He shot Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbüz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar and Kaloyan Velkov.
The assassin then drove home, killed his mother and finally himself. There will probably not be a court hearing in the case, but a committee of inquiry is trying to work things out.
Two years after the attack, memorial campaigns are taking place this Saturday in Hanau and other cities.
One of the people calling for this was the »Initiative 19 February Hanau«, which was formed by survivors of the attack and relatives of the victims.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) and Hesse's Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) are expected to attend a central commemoration event at Hanau's main cemetery.
Under the motto »Say their Names«, the bereaved want to commemorate the victims.
The initiative fights for "appropriate remembrance, social justice, complete clarification and political consequences".
The racist attack was also a result of right-wing incitement by politicians, parties and the media.
According to a call for support published on the website, authorities and security apparatuses "neither prevented nor clarified" the crime.
»Racism, no matter what form, must no longer be tolerated, played down and ignored.«
What has happened since the assassination?
What became of the individual investigations?
The overview.
The investigations
Since the perpetrator took his own life, the federal prosecutor's office was still investigating unknown persons.
This procedure was discontinued last December.
There is therefore no evidence of accomplices, instigators, assistants or accomplices of the Hanau assassin.
The surviving relatives make serious allegations against the father of the assassin.
The federal prosecutor announced that his role had been “comprehensively” examined.
In particular, the results of the investigation did not justify the assumption that he was involved in the attack "in any way that is criminally relevant" or that he knew of his son's plans.
Their world view "with extremist and conspiracy theory tendencies" was largely the same, but did not justify any participation in the crime or complicity.
Relatives and survivors had previously filed criminal charges against the assassin's father and accused the 74-year-old of being an accessory to murder or not reporting planned crimes.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office and the Federal Criminal Police Office followed around 300 tips and traces to clarify the background to the attack, in particular suggestions from the victims' lawyers involved in the proceedings, the investigators explained.
In total, more than 400 witnesses were heard and hundreds of evidence objects were examined by forensic technology.
The judgment against the father
At the beginning of October 2021, the Hanau district court sentenced the assassin’s father to 90 daily rates of 60 euros for racist insults.
It was about "denigrating and belittling" people, according to the judge.
The 74-year-old was accused of three counts.
According to the indictment, at a vigil near his home he had repeatedly described the approximately 30 participants, including relatives of the victims of the attack, as "wild strangers".
He is also said to have written a letter to the Attorney General.
In it he called the special task force (SEK) of the police headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, which stormed his house on the night of the attack, "terrorist commando" and "terrorist unit".
The letter is a jumble of racist, conspiracy ideological sentences.
In a letter to the Hanau district court, he also insulted Mayor Claus Kaminsky.
The man made a disturbing appearance in court.
He had to be shown tied up.
One reviewer characterized him as egocentric, self-absorbed, unreflective, and completely unempathetic to the needs of those around him.
The investigation into the emergency exit and a new report
Relatives of the victims and survivors blame the authorities for what happened – among other things, it is about a possibly locked emergency exit at the sixth crime scene, the Arena Bar on Kurt-Schumacher-Platz in Kesselstadt.
The assassin shot dead two young men in the bar: Said Nesar Hashemi and Hamza Kurtovic.
They had fled to the back of the bar with other patrons, where they were trapped.
Two survivors from the bar and the Kurtovic family filed a complaint against an unknown person: Due to a conversion behind the counter, there was no direct escape route, and the emergency exit was locked from the inside on the night of the crime.
This is said to have been no exception, police officers would have known it and even ordered the emergency exit to be closed to prevent visitors from fleeing during raids.
The Hanau public prosecutor's office found no evidence of this and stopped the investigation in August 2021.
According to the investigators, it could not be clarified with certainty whether the emergency exit was really closed.
Employees said the door was unlocked.
In addition, it is not certain that the men could have actually escaped through an unlocked emergency exit.
more on the subject
Stop by Hanau: In the trap by Julia Jüttner
Stop of Hanau: The death of Ferhat UnvarBy Julia Jüttner
In December, the results of an expert report that the research collective Forensic Architecture had prepared on behalf of the »Initiative 19 February Hanau« became known.
It examines whether the people in the Arena Bar would have had enough time to flee from the perpetrator if they had run to the emergency exit and it was unlocked.
Forensic Architecture evaluated the recordings of the surveillance cameras and thus reconstructed what was happening in the bar.
According to this, there were nine seconds between the moment Said Etris Hashemi, the brother of the killed Said Nesar Hashemi, saw the perpetrator with a gun in his hand and the moment he entered the bar.
Meanwhile, in a kiosk in the same building, the racist killed three people: Gökhan Gültekin, Mercedes Kierpacz and Ferhat Unvar.
The investigation comes to the conclusion: "If the emergency exit was open and they had known that, then they could all have survived the attack." This conclusion contradicts the findings of the public prosecutor's office, which are also based on the video recordings, among other things reconstructed the event.
However, the investigators measure the crucial time window for a possible escape differently and argue that the group may have moved away from the perpetrator towards the storage room instead of towards the emergency exit due to the "natural instinct to flee".
Failed emergency calls
Another omission that the families of the victims of the Hanau attack accuse the authorities of: the police emergency call system in Hanau was technically inadequate and understaffed on the night of the crime.
At the beginning of February 2021, Hesse's Interior Minister Peter Beuth admitted to problems with the emergency call on the night of the crime.
"It's true that the police station could only take a limited number of calls that night," said the CDU politician.
The total emergency call volume for the Hanau police station averages 80 calls a day.
"For technical reasons, it was not possible to forward the many emergency calls that came in at the same time at the time of the night of the crime," says Beuth.
On the evening of the crime, Vili-Viorel Păun called 911 three times while driving after the perpetrator who had fired on his car.
But he couldn't get through - and was shot.
His father filed a criminal complaint.
Before that, the Hanau public prosecutor's office had initiated a so-called examination process.
In July she then announced: There will be no investigation.
There is no initial suspicion, senior public prosecutor Dominik Mies told SPIEGEL.
»A criminally relevant misconduct by members of the Hanau I police station was not determined.«
Read the complete statement from the Hanau public prosecutor's office on the processes in the emergency call center here.
In autumn, senior public prosecutor Mies rejected the sometimes violent allegations against the authorities - and judged some media harshly, including SPIEGEL.
The parliamentary review
In July 2021, a committee of inquiry in the Hessian state parliament began work.
The parliamentarians should investigate whether there were omissions or errors in the state government and the security authorities.
Dates have been announced until the end of 2022.
At the start of the public sessions in December last year, the "Initiative 19 February Hanau" drew attention to the concerns of the bereaved of the racist attack.
The first members of the committee to speak as witnesses were relatives of the victims.
When the brother of one of the victims of the attack finished his report, it was very quiet for a few minutes in the hall where the investigative committee of the Hessian state parliament met.
Hayrettin Saraçoğlu had previously described in detail as a witness how tissue samples from his dead brother Fatih were handed over to him.
After the autopsy, they stayed behind in the forensic medicine department in Frankfurt.
He personally brought these remains to Turkey for burial.
He really felt very lonely in this situation, said Saraçoğlu, whose statements are translated by an interpreter.
He said he found out about his brother's death from his landlady.
He received support from a lawyer and sought psychological help on his own.
"I wish someone from the authorities would have pointed the way and let us know," he said.
"As a result of the attack, I not only lost my beloved brother, my entire existence has been destroyed." It is good that the relatives can speak publicly before the committee.
It is a problem that affects all of Germany.
"The root of the problem is racism."
wit/dpa