Committee on the Hanau attack adopts final report
Two months before the end of the Hessian parliamentary term, the committee of inquiry into the deadly attack in Hanau has adopted its final report. "The majority of the report has met with broad approval," said committee chairman Stephan Grüger (SPD), referring to votes on individual topics at the 42nd meeting of the committee in Wiesbaden on Friday. However, four rather shorter special votes from all current opposition groups are also planned for the report, which is more than 600 pages long.
The text is to be submitted to the state parliament on December 5, which is expected to be the last session of this legislative period. A new state parliament will be constituted on January 18, 2024. A change from black-green to black-red is expected on the government bench. The CDU and Green parliamentary groups in government to date are the only groups that have not announced any special votes for the parliamentary committee of inquiry.
This committee had been looking into the attack since summer 2021 in order to clarify whether there were failures by the authorities before, during and after the crime. Within just five minutes on February 19, 2020, the German perpetrator shot nine young people in Hanau for racist reasons. He then killed his mother and himself. The committee discussed possible lessons that have already been learned from dealing with the attack or that can still be implemented.
In the words of the Green parliamentary group, it was important to "record an apology to the relatives that the state and local authorities failed to protect them from becoming victims of a racist attack". It can be assumed that different official action would have made it "more difficult to carry out the crime or would have changed the course of the crime". If, for example, a victim who was chasing the perpetrator by car and did not get through to the police when the emergency call failed, he might have been prevented from continuing his journey and, according to the Greens, might still be alive. But the man was shot dead.
The Left Party parliamentary group called the final report, which is currently in draft form, a "clean bill of health for the black-green domestic policy". For the public, the survivors and relatives of the victims, the text was an affront. There had been "a whole chain of police organizational failures during the operation on the night of the crime and in the aftermath".
The FDP parliamentary group drew a generally positive balance: the investigation had been successful. In their special vote, however, the Liberals criticized, among other things, failures in the emergency call without naming those responsible. But "an emergency call must always work".
In its own words, the AfD parliamentary group "made a significant contribution to the success of the committee's work" - in response to its questions, responsibilities had been acknowledged. At the same time, she thanked the police officers, rescue workers and volunteers in February 2020.
The final report of the Parliamentary committee on the Hanau attack mentions the necessity of addressing extremism, as failure to protect the victims was seen as a failure of the state and local authorities to adequately address racist extremism. Despite various political groups having different views on the report, there seems to be consensus on the need for authorities to better handle such situations in the future.
Source: www.dpa.com
