the court proceedings against Rolf Z. will be continued at Berlin-Moabit Court House.

The Burak Bektaş Initiative demands: The court needs to focus on the right wing orientation and racist background of the murder. The potential connection with the killing of Burak Bektaş of April 5th 2012 has to be looked into.

Concerning the Right-wing/Racist Background and the Miniaturizing of Right Wing Terror

More than half of the process days have passed. The accused remains silent. A number of certified circumstances and witness accounts have made clear that he is the killer. Visitors to dance club Del Rex saw him in the club and later after the deed in the street in front of the club. The killer’s gun was found at Rolf Z.’s sisters apartment, where Rolf Z. had hidden it in the aftermath of the killing. Traces of gunpowder on Rolf Z.’s clothes, his apartment door and the used weapon further clarified his actions during and after the killing.

Before committing the deed in the club he had referred negatively to “foreigners” in the club talking to a witness: “everybody speaking only Spanish and English there”. Only the third week into the process there was the first mentioning of Rolf Z.’s right wing/ racist orientations. Testifying police officers reported on a search of Rolf Z.’s apartment being full of Nazi and militaristic devotional objects: Sabers, guns, pistols, a bust of Hitler, several posters of Hitler and a picture of leading Nazi officials, a flag of the militant Nazi band “Landser”, a map of the German Reich within the borders of its greatest extension of 1938, etc. pp.

Apart from the interior of his apartment there was also witness testimony from Rolf Z.’s family and friends speaking at police interrogations about Rolf Z.’s political ideas. Ideologically he supposedly was close to the Neo-Nazi party NPD. In the course of the court proceedings these same friends tried to downplay this political background though, talking about him in individual and nonpolitical terms as a maybe strange or a little crazy freak that loved anything connected to weapons. Actually a whole variety of old time and modern weapons (military and hunting guns, pistols, revolvers etc.) and a kilogram of black powder were found at his apartment. The black powder and its potential use for bombings has not been addressed at all in the process so far.

A collection of questions, that have not been addressed in this process at all, may show the downplay of the dangers of Rolf Z. and his surroundings in the way the court has been treating him so far:

– How has Rolf Z. become owner of his weaponry and how and where did he get his training on use and shooting of guns? Who has supported him in this? I.e. where did Rolf Z. buy the wide array of weaponry he owned (shops? networks?)
– Where did he learn about how to manipulate and transform some of his originally “harmless” guns, legally sold to anybody above 18 years, into lethal weapons?
– Did he have support in this (knowledge, tools)?
– How has he produced or purchased the kilogram of black powder?
– What kind of knowledge on black powder and its dangers must he have had?
– Who supported him with it? Is there indication in the consistency of the black powder itself as to its production or origins?
– What kind of information contains Rolf Z.’s archive folders on the usage of weapons and gun powder, which additional (neo-fascist) literature does he own, where has he bought or obtained the relevant literature?

Public media attention of the murder has been de-politized. The deed has been portrayed as done by an (isolated) individual, a somewhat crazy fan of weapons with a Nazi- or Hitler fancy. The political dimension of the deed has been ignored, thereby repeating the omissions and mistakes of the investigation of the of the killing and bombing series of the “national socialist underground” (NSU) in the years of 2000 to 2007. The NSU complex has demonstrated in an awful way what happens when police and judiciary ignore the racist background in the motivation of a deed.

On the potential connection between the Murder of Luke Holland and the Murder of Burak Bektaş

In the police files on the murder of Burak Bektaş Rolf Z. had been mentioned in December of 2013. The lead had been closed without any result after a little more than a year. The witness who had given the information on Rolf Z. had been only questioned on the phone, the incriminated Rolf Z. had not been contacted at all. The police claims that they compared ammunition found at Rolf Z.’s apartment in an earlier search in 2006 with ammunition found at the site of the murder of Burak Bektaş, with a negative result. A mentioned brother of Rolf Z. and partner in shoot-out training, living near the crime site of Burak could not be found and the file was closed.

Now during the court proceedings against Rolf Z. in the case of the murder of Luke Holland it has become clear, that Rolf Z. had been an often time visitor to the house of his brother, and after the brother had died 7 years ago, to the widow, just two streets away from the killing site of Burak Bektaş. It had been the claim of the person who had informed the police about his suspicion in the Burak case, that in the basement of this brother’s house, Rolf Z. supposedly trained his shooting abilities together with his brother – although this witness, when called in as a witness by the lawyers of Luke Hollands‘ parents, wasn’t very clear in what he remembered of these conversations with Rolf Z. years ago. Friends of Burak and witnesses of the murder of 2012 who asked for an identification parade with Rolf Z. were turned away by the police, because nobody back in 2012 had testified as to the killer having a beard.

In the trial on the murder of Luke Holland the court has stopped all action on the side of the joint plaintiff representing the parents of Luke Holland to look into potential links with the murder of Burak. The files on the search of Rolf Z.’s apartment for illegal weapons of 2006, used in 2013 to cross check the seized ammunition with ammunition parts found on the Burak crime site, could not be referred to in the running proceedings, because it had been destroyed since then due to “privacy protection legislation”.

It seems to us, that police and judiciary try to rule out any connection of the two murders without further investigation. The reason being, that if there was a connection, the thesis of an unpolitical individual deed can not be uphold. Also police and state prosecution would be rightfully criticized because the insufficient and inadequate investigation against Rolf Z. in the case of Burak Bektaş may have made it possible for Rolf Z. to kill Luke Holland.

As to the lessons learned from the handling of the NSU murder and bombing series: the same methods of not taking seriously, not wanting to look closely, of de-politizecing and looking as harmless on the deeds of right wing, Nazi and racist criminals, that made right wing terror possible in the years after 2000 in the first place, are still in place now.

For us it is clear: The murder of Luke Holland needs to be added to the list of racist and right wing killings in Berlin. This is what needs to be looked at. Police investigation and court proceedings need to be adjusted accordingly.

We demand a thorough investigation of the circumstances and the background of the killing of Luke Holland and its possible connections to the murder of Burak Bektaş!

We call on you to attend the continuing public court proceedings!
On Wednesday, June 8th , at 9 o’clock a. m., the process will be continued.
Further court days will be Monday and Wednesday, the 13th, 15th . und 20th of June

each at 9 o’clock a. m.,
Landgericht Berlin, Moabit court house,
Turmstraße 91,
10559 Berlin