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| Europe |
| German state intelligence chief fired over neo-Nazi probe |
| 2012-07-04 |
| BERLIN: A German regional intelligence chief was dismissed Tuesday over a botched probe into serial killings blamed on neo-Nazis, a day after the national domestic intelligence chief resigned. Interior minister in central Thuringia state Joerg Geibert announced that Thomas Sippel was being sent into early retirement, saying he “no longer has the confidence of the (state) parliament.” “We are agreed that this step is right and necessary,” Geibert said adding the decision was the outcome of talks with Sippel. The move follows a surprise announcement Monday that Germany’s national domestic intelligence director Heinz Fromm, 63, would take early retirement over blunders in the investigation. Fromm had been under fire since November when it emerged that a far-right trio calling itself the National Socialist Underground (NSU) was likely behind a murder spree with 10 victims, most of them of Turkish origin. But he finally threw in the towel after an interior ministry official testified to a parliamentary committee last week that files with information about neo-Nazis were destroyed by agency employees. The Thuringia state branch of the domestic intelligence service was part of an operation which saw intelligence agents try to recruit Thuringia-based right-wing extremists as informants. |
| Posted by:Steve White |