Two Neo-Nazis Haven't Been Arrested Months After Stabbing a Journalist

This article originally VICE Germany

Eight weeks ago, two known neo-Nazis chased down two journalists in a village in the German state of Thuringia, and then attacked them with a wrench, a knife, a baseball bat and pepper spray.

During the incident, the attackers didn't seem too concerned with concealing their identities. One of the assailants, a vocal member of the ultranationalist party NPD, made no attempt to cover his face, and the second guy was photographed several times by one of the journalists.

You'd assume it shouldn't have taken long for the pair to be arrested, but almost two months later, no charges have been filed and no neo-Nazis have been arrested. According to local authorities, they are still looking for suspects in the case.

It all happened in Fretterode, a village in Thuringia of around 170 people. A massive manor house stands in the middle of the village, looming over the properties surrounding it. The place belongs to Thorsten Heise – a local NPD chief and one of the most well-known neo-Nazis in Germany. In April, he organised the Shield and Sword festival in Ostritz, a town on the Polish border, attended by about 800 right-wing extremists.

A few days after the festival, on the 29th of April, freelance journalist Malte* stood in front of the manor with another journalist from the nearby city Göttingen. Heise had invited a few friends around to discuss an upcoming demonstration, and the two journalists wanted to report on the meeting. At some point, NPD members must have noticed them because, according to Malte, two of Heise's guests came out of the house. He claims one of them was B.*, a 24-year-old member of the NPD in Göttingen, who is said to be something of a political son to Heise. Malte remembers seeing the two heading his way. "At that point, we decided to leave the village," he says.

But it wasn't as simple as that. The journalists just about managed to drive off in their car, after the NPD members ran towards them armed with a wrench and a baseball bat. "They ran down the main street after us," says Malte. "At one point, a neighbour came out of their driveway and accidentally crashed into the side of our car, but we had to keep going." The two journalists managed to shake off their chasers and get out of the village, but say B. and his accomplice eventually caught up with them in a black BMW. The chase went on for almost five miles before the journalists tried swerving out of the way to avoid their attackers, but instead found themselves crashing into a ditch. Malte says he managed to get the memory card out of his camera and stuff it into his sock just before their back windscreen was smashed through with a wrench.

From there, Malte says the two attackers smashed through the rest of the car windows, slashed the tyres and filled the inside of the car with pepper spray. His colleague managed to get out of the car, only to be grabbed and smacked across the head with the wrench. The other assailant tried to steal Malte's camera, but when the journalist resisted, began slashing around with a knife, eventually stabbing Malte in the thigh. After taking his camera, the pair jumped back in their car and drove off back in the direction of Fretterode. Police arrived 20 minutes later.

Later that day, the journalists gave a statement to the police, identifying one of the attackers as B. They were less sure about the second man, but offered the name of someone they thought it could be. When they later studied Malte's photos, they found that they were wrong about B.'s accomplice and retracted that part of their earlier statement. "We then gave the police the memory card with over 30 photos on it," Malte tells me. They later filed criminal charges for attempted murder and robbery. Since then, Malte says, they haven't heard a word about the investigation.

Thorsten Heise's house was searched on the day of the attack, but no arrests were made and no other searches were done. That itself generated criticism in the week after the attack. "I cannot understand why the suspects were not searched for evidence," said Martina Renner, an MP for the left-wing Die Linke party on the Wednesday after the attack. "Given the seriousness of the offence, it would have been vital to find the weapons, clothing and any mobile phones." Ezra, an organisation for victims of right-wing, racist and anti-semitic violence in Thuringia, called police and the prosecution "inconsistent".

Almost two months on, not much has happened. Recently, the state prosecutor made the statement that there was "no significant suspicion" against anyone. Local prosecutor Dirk Germerodt has claimed to local press that authorities have found it difficult to identify the alleged perpetrators, because it's hard to verify whether the photos of the attackers have been manipulated in any way.

"It's completely absurd," the victim's lawyer, Sven Adam, tells me. "These photos are straight off the memory card. It's almost technically impossible to manipulate them." MP Martina Renner also found the police's statement questionable. "When government officials start to accuse journalists of manipulating photos of their attackers, they are trampling on press freedom," she said in a press release weeks after the attacks.

Germerodt still thinks the criticism is unfair. "I never said that we thought the photos were fake," he tells me. "All I said was that we need to make sure that they are actual evidence."

Germerodt assures me that the investigation is still underway. "The case is more complicated than it seemed at first glance," he insists. He doesn't want to go into the details, but the fact that both victims have stated that B. attacked them doesn't hold much weight for him. "Their statement about the other attacker was retracted the next day," Germerodt counters. "So we're still sceptical about who they think was behind this."

Sven Adam believes the authorities could have done more to substantiate the claims, like doing a photo lineup. "That will happen," Germerodt says. "But the problem is, who would we show it to?" When I suggest he shows the lineup to the victims, he laughs. "They know the person in the picture, so why should I show them again?"

Local anti-fascism groups have demanded that the prosecutor's office hands the case over to the Thuringia Ministry of Justice, a move Adam agrees with because he says, so far, the police's actions "raise concerns about bias". To this, Germerodt insists that he and his colleagues are not fascists,, and that allegations that they are come from people "who do not understand the rule of law".

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Whatever the reasoning, the handling of this case will do little to deter violent neo-Nazis from assaulting people they see as a potential threat. According to Ezra, the number of attacks by neo-Nazis in Thuringia and Lower Saxony have gone up in the past year, especially against journalists. In April of 2017, for example, members of the right-wing Friends Circle attacked a group of photographers in Friedland, central Germany.

Local authorities seem consistent, though. About two weeks ago, a separate case against Heise was dropped after it was determined that the image of two Stielhandgranate grenades on T-shirts confiscated at Heise's Nazi festival in Ostritz was not a "known symbol of any former Nazi-affiliated group". It's an interesting conclusion, given that the crossed grenades were the troop insignia of the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS – which, during World War II, had a reputation for being the most sadistic unit in the SS.

* Names have been changed to protect identities.