Police And Prosecution Investigating Neo-Nazi Connection In German Vendor Case

At the end of May, German law enforcement authorities detained six persons who were allegedly running a vendor shop selling narcotics on the dark web. On June 13, the prosecutor’s office and the police department in Aachen, Germany, announced they are also investigating the neo-Nazi connection in the case.

On May 31 evening, the SEK (Special Deployment Commando) was tasked to perform two raids in Aachen, Germany. The first assignment took place on the corner street at about 5:00 pm, however, shortly after 7 pm, there was another police operation in Buschstraße. According to the prosecutor’s office in Aachen, both missions were related to drug-criminality. In the law enforcement operation, the SEK units detained six people.

The men arrested were three German nationals at the age of 23, 29 and 34 years. The 23-year-old was arrested at his home in Buschstraße. According to the prosecutor’s office, they had a warrant for the arrest stating that the suspects violated the Narcotics Act. In addition, three other men were arrested who are being investigated by the police. In one of the arrests, investigators already released one suspect.

“Later it was reported that two arrest warrants were issued. There seems to be no suspicion against the third person, he was released several hours later,” the prosecutor’s office stated.

The 23, 29, and the 34-year-old suspects are accused of selling drugs on the dark web. According to the prosecution, all payments were conducted in bitcoins.

The investigation started when Europol provided details on the suspects, which the European agency acquired from seized darknet marketplaces in November 2014. The investigations were first conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), however, later on, it was handed to the Aachen Public Prosecutor’s Office. It is assumed that since the autumn of 2015, the defendants alone sent at least 20 kilograms of amphetamine, with the total price of at least 160,000 euros, to their customers using the national postal service. However, where the criminals kept the profits of their drug operation, remains subject to the investigation.

Law enforcement authorities secured evidence from the suspects, including computers and amphetamine in the kilogram range. There is also a witness in the case, who will be questioned by the police later.

According to the German news publication Zeit Online, the suspects were allegedly members of a militant neo-Nazi group called “Kameradschaft Aachener Land” (KAL). The comradeship was banned in 2012 by Ralf Jäger, the interior minister of North-Rhine Westphalia, for “aggressively combative attitude … against elementary principles of the constitution”. Zeit Online claimed that the 34-year-old suspect is a “well-known” neo-Nazi. However, this information was not confirmed by the prosecutor’s office in Aachen.

The news outlet also claimed that the arrest exploded the social network, where some members of the German neo-Nazi movement stated that the police action was a conspiracy between the police and the judiciary, while others were “cursing their comrades for doing drugs”.

“It is quite clear that drugs have no place in our ranks”, neo-Nazi activist, Sven Skoda, wrote after the arrests. However, Zeit Online claimed that Skoda referred to some of the arrested suspects as “comrades, who have always stood with our courage and blood in their hearts, even in troubled times to our idea”.

Another German news outlet, bnr.de, confirmed what Zeit Online stated. In addition, according to BNR, law enforcement authorities are now considering the two suspects in the case as members of the neo-Nazi movement. Timm and Karl M., two brothers who were arrested in the case, were allegedly members of neo-Nazi parties “Die Rechte” (“The Right”) and the “Identitären Bewegung” (“Identity Movement”). In addition, the parents of the brothers were also active in the scene, the news outlet reported. The father was allegedly leading an “important neo-Nazi squad” in North Rhine-Westphalia for decades, while the mother was active in the neo-Nazi scene of East Germany. The publication added that the 34-year-old Timm M. had previously written songs for the neo-Nazi hip hop artist “Makss Damage”. In October 2016, a neo-Nazi concert took place in the Swiss canton of St. Gallen in front of 5,000 neo-Nazis, mainly from Germany, with Makss Damage on the stage, BNR reported. Timm M. was active both in the KAL but was also involved in building a legally secured successor organization called “Syndikat 52” (S52) from mid-2014.

BNR claimed that there are patterns in certain neo-Nazi groups’ organizational structures, saying that many of these gangs finance themselves from the sale of narcotics in the regions of Greater Aachen, Düren, and Heinsberg. However, the news publication included no sources that would support its argument (except for the current case).

BNR also reported that a part of the neo-Nazi community bashed the suspects in the case for selling drugs. However, many legitimized their actions saying that soldiers of the German Wehrmacht in World War II also used “Panzerschokolade” in the fight against the enemy. Panzerschokolade or Pervitin was the predecessor of today’s methamphetamine.