The Hanau Protocols: Aftermath of a Deadly Racist Attack
Diana Sokoli: But why are you to blame?
Kim Schröder: Because I was standing there and ducked when the shots were fired! If I hadn’t ducked, all of us who were in that kiosk would be dead, and Dario too!
Diana Sokoli: I can understand, though. It was the same with Fatih. He drove his friend here that day because he wanted to save the 10 euros for the taxi. I also beat up the friend and insulted him. Instead of sitting in the car, his friend said, come brother, let’s get out and have another smoke.
Çetin Gültekin: It’s God’s will. There is nothing we can do about it. This friend who said one cigarette, one more cigarette, he was just the reason. And there also moments when we say, let’s smoke another cigarette, and then you stay alive.
Like many here, Serpil Unvar is a believer. But since Ferhat’s death, she says she has found it harder to believe in things like heaven and hell. She’s scared and wonders: What if there’s nothing after death and I never see him again?
Serpil Unvar: Why is Ferhat dead, Emiş?
Emiş Gürbüz: And why is Sedat dead, Serpil?
Serpil Unvar: Ferhat was a sad boy.
Emiş Gürbüz: Sedat was always laughing.
Serpil Unvar: If I had made him happier, he wouldn’t have been in that kiosk.
Emiş Gürbüz: I should have just sat in that shisha bar with Sedat for 24 hours. We didn’t take good enough care of our children, they just slipped through our fingers. It’s our own fault.
When it comes to the question of guilt, the conversations always lead to the parents of the gunman.
The families do not view the perpetrator’s mother, who he shot that night, as a victim. They say she looked the other way for decades, not wanting to see what her child was doing. The gunman’s father, a 73-year-old engineer, was taken to a psychiatric ward after the night of the crime and then to a hotel. Although the doctor told the police not to bring him back, he returned to the neighborhood three weeks after the crime.
Serpil Unvar: Do you think we could live in Hanau if our children had done that?
Dijana Kurtović: No, of course not! And look at what happened in Trier, and the old man has a driver’s license and cars. He could drive into a crowd of people, couldn’t he?
Their investigation has revealed that the gunman’s father has turned to the authorities on at least 17 occasions, filing complaints filled with racist content, all after the Feb. 19 massacre. He has submitted written requests to reclaim his son’s murder weapons and ammunition. He views the memorials, which are supposed to commemorate the victims, as “incitement of the people.” He wants the authorities to unblock his son’s website. He photographed the Arena Bar years before his son’s crime and saved the pictures on his computer.
On this late December day, relatives are holding a vigil in front of his home. Piter Minnemann is standing at the microphone and he looks at the police when he asks: Why did the officers send me home on foot on the night of the crime? Why did they hide behind Etris just because one of them screamed: The shooter is back? Why am I doing worse today than I was a year ago? Why are we afraid again? Who is protecting whom in this country?
Ajla Kurtović: After the funeral service, the police liaison for immigrants called me. She said there were new findings in the investigation and that they couldn’t speak to my father because he’s so impulsive. The father of the gunman had returned, and she asked me to tell my dad in a quiet moment. And she told me to tell him that there was no point in seeking revenge. That if we retaliated, we would only be hindering the police’s work. She told me to call her if my dad was planning something. I hung up and thought: Was that for real?
Officials called all the families in Kesselstadt around that time, and they visited survivors and they also warned seriously injured people like Etris Hashemi to abide by German law, repeating these terms over and over again: blood vengeance, vigilante justice, preventative custody.
As Minnemann asks questions at the vigil, the father of the gunman walks up and down behind the police officers and then shouts: Get off my property! He leads a German shepherd on a leash.
Home
Armin Kurtović: I have considered having Hamza exhumed and brought to Bosnia. I can’t go on. Everyone who comes says I have done everything I can for you. If the crime had happened in a German beer hall, the emergency exit would have been open. Just let them say it publicly: You shitty dagos, you’re not worth protecting!
You can submit an official query as to why the emergency exit of the Arena Bar was closed that night, and as a journalist you are always told to direct your request to someone else. The police say that they noticed that the emergency exit was closed and that they had reported it to the trade licensing office and that an obviously illegal employee in the shop had been reported to the main customs office in Darmstadt. The trade licensing office, meanwhile, says it isn’t responsible for keeping escape routes clear, and instead says the issue should be referred to the Darmstadt regional council. The regional council says it is responsible but that it hadn’t received any notification regarding the Arena Bar. The main customs office, meanwhile, confirms that it received the notification but states that it is not responsible for emergency exits.
DER SPIEGEL found that the trade licensing office initiated proceedings against the bar’s operator in November 2017, and that the man was to have his bar license revoked. Neighbors had complained about noise and drugs. The operator fought back in court and it wasn’t until November 2019 that he finally lost his license. He remained the owner, but rented the establishment to a new tenant.
In the meantime, the public prosecutor’s office in Hanau is investigating, but only because Armin Kurtović, the grieving father, has filed a criminal complaint for involuntary manslaughter against unknown persons.
It seems as though the trial in the shopfront on Krämerstrasse is doing more to seek clarification and consequences than the authorities in Hesse, who only admitted their omissions on the night of the crime after relatives and survivors refused to relent with their public questioning of events. And no matter how many times they ask, they can’t shake the feeling that something is being kept from them. The deeper that impression gets, the more they feel likes strangers in this country.
Armin Kurtović was born in Schweinfurt 46 years ago. During the interview with the Federal Government’s Victims’ Commissioner, he put his German identity card on the table and asked: What’s this thing worth if I’m not treated like a German?
At Krämerstrasse, people are wondering why they had to experience racism from officials after the crime. Why the autopsy report mentioned an “oriental, Mediterranean-looking appearance” in the case of a young man who was blond and blue-eyed, or why an interpreter was sent to them when a DNA sample was taken. Why the police sent their migration officers, the city sent the foreigner’s advisory council, even to families who have been living here for decades.
In the months following the crime, they had to listen to television interviews in which Heiko Kasseckert, a member of the Hesse state parliament with the conservative CDU party, demanded that the pictures of their children be removed from the Grimm Brothers monument. His reasoning: The market square isn’t a crime scene and the Grimm Brothers are, after all, the city’s most famous sons.
They say it pains them to watch, a year after the crime, the Hesse state parliament vote to approve an aid fund for crime victims, but fail to name “racism” or “right-wing extremism” as part of its purpose.
Çetin Gültekin: Foreigners have been dying and burning here since 1989. What did we do? We didn’t harm a thing. We are totally reasonable people! At some point, we have to go ballistic. Otherwise this is going to happen in another city. The Nazis think the victims are decent people and won’t fight back. Hanau needs to be the last place where this happens!
Armin Kurtović: They just want us to do it, Çetin, so they can say they’re animals, they’re criminals. That they’ve lived here for generations and still haven’t integrated.
In the years before they had their own children, right-wing extremists murdered people in the cities of Mölln and Solingen and committed racist attacks in Rostock and Hoyerswerda. Their children were becoming young adults when news broke of the NSU murders, and they saw rise of the right-wing populist AfD.
In Hesse, Volker Bouffier has served as governor for more than 10 years now. They say he intervened in the investigation into the NSU murders as the state’s interior minister at the time and protected an intelligence agent who had been at the scene of one of the crimes at the moment of the killing. After their meeting with him in the state capital in Wiesbaden, they called him “The Yogurt Man.” During their visit with him there, he had served them yogurt and said he had seen much worse attacks. When they asked why the families were treated so badly after the crime, he promised them: We’ll do better next time.
Armin Kurtović: You know what the worst thing is? When he was at City Hall, sitting across from us with tears in his eyes, I believed what he said …
Dijana Kurtović: … It could have been my son.
Armin Kurtović: How naive we were. He could say, you know, your loved ones are dead, I can’t bring them back, I’m sorry, we failed, my agencies failed, we were overwhelmed. We will learn lessons from this. Çetin, we have other children, do we have to worry something will happen to them, too?
Posting by Ferhat Unvar on his Facebook page in 2016:
In 1945 a country shouted
“Never again!”
Suddenly, there’s the AfD,
concerned citizens and Pegida (Lyric from the song “Sick World” by the German rapper Pillath)
Serpil Unvar: Ferhat was right about his worries. If he saw what I was doing here, he’d ask me: Mom, have you lost it? Do you really think you can make a difference in this country?
Staying
Serpil Unvar has since founded the Ferhat Unvar Education Initiative and wants to fight racism in schools.
Saida Hashemi passed her exams this fall and is now a math and history teacher. She is also running for office in local elections for the Social Democrats.
Najiba Hashemi is taking German lessons. She wants to be able to understand the files even better and write a book for Nesar.
Sedat Gürbüz has been given an honorary grave.
Ferhat’s cousin Abdullah Unvar wants to run for a seat in the German federal parliament.
Etris Hashemi has led a swimming course for children, just as he used to do with his brother Nesar.
Çetin Gültekin moved away from Kesselstadt with his mother and son. He says that when Mert gets married, he’ll buy a motorhome and tour around Europe with his mother.