An interview by Lothar Bassermann. Originally published in german language on jungewelt.de
Note: Due to character limitations, not all points are listed in as much detail as they should be.
In the Berlin district of Neu-Hohenschönhausen, there have been around 20 fires in an apparent series since the beginning of 2022. The police investigation also led to Leon Suslik, a 20-year-old neo-Nazi. What is known about this to your group, which is also following the proceedings in the regional court, which have been ongoing since May 9?
So far we know that there have been regular arson attacks on residential buildings and youth clubs in the last 18 months. Mostly it is cellars or – especially in the case of youth clubs – garbage containers that are torched. The police had noted a serious arson on October 9, 2022, which they say belongs to the “right-wing phenomenon area.”
What happened then?
The targets were refugees in a residential building on Zingster Straße. Four suspects, including Leon Suslik, were identified. Suslik, who is accused of involvement in various fires, is also alleged to have left racist letters of threat at the crime scenes or in their surroundings. On December 30, 2022, house searches were carried out in Berlin and NRW. Since then, Suslik has also been in custody. As it became clear in court on Tuesday, the reason for the raids was the threat of an attack on a refugee camp, which police claim to have learned about from the defendants’ telecommunications surveillance.
What did the trial uncover?
It is certain that we are dealing with a racist series of attacks. Many things should have raised the alarm earlier. For example, that Suslik and his circle of friends, despite their young age, have been ideologically stable neo-Nazis for years. This was reported by social workers from the youth clubs they visited and relatives of the perpetrators. They were banned from the clubs several times, among other things for theft and minor arson. Later, these places also became victims of the fires. The perpetrators appear very unprofessional, act without thinking and incriminate each other to the police. Our first impression is that this is a case of young people with behavioral problems meeting a prevailing right-wing youth culture that is firmly anchored in Hohenschönhausen.
So far, no one has been seriously harmed by the series of fires. However, anyone who sets fire to basements in high-rise apartment buildings at night, as the perpetrators did, clearly risks injuring people …
This impression can also be gained from the letters of threat that were distributed in the neighborhood of the crime scenes. They clearly refer to the fires, because on the front it usually said: “Have fun extinguishing”. In them, racist demands were made, for example that migration and Islamization must be stopped or else right-wing terrorist acts against civilians would happen.
What else is known from the trial about the other suspects?
Roy Böhme, for example, is described as a very good friend of Suslik and is also an established neo-Nazi. While Suslik had still appeared at the club ready to talk and wanted to discuss his opinion about Nazism, which was openly fascist, Böhme did not engage in talks at all. The four people charged are all about the same age and a circle of friends, some still from school days.
What is your group doing to inform the public?
We provide the neighborhood with anti-fascist information flyers. While distributing them, we have noticed that most of the residents are insecure. The fires also continue unhindered. To our knowledge, only Leon Suslik is in custody. We would have liked to have received information from the neighborhood earlier, for example from a CDU politician who received the letter in his mailbox, or from the youth clubs. It is necessary to inform the neighborhood and not simply rely on the work of the police. We also want more antifascist structures to emerge in the neighborhood. There is a lack of self-organized places for non-right-wing youth to go.