Here A Nazi; There A Nazi Pt. IV

ARSON SUSPICIONS AFTER LUDWIGSHAFEN BLAZE
Police Find Neo-Nazi Graffiti on Burnt-Out Building

German police investigating eyewitness claims that Sunday's blaze in Ludwigshafen was caused by arson have found neo-Nazi graffiti daubed on the building where nine Turkish immigrants died. Turkish media are reporting that the occupants had received xenophobic threats.

German police said on Wednesday they had found neo-Nazi symbols daubed next to the entrance to a Turkish cultural center on the ground floor of the Ludwigshafen building where nine Turkish immigrants, including five children, died in a fire on Sunday.

The word "Hass," German for hatred, had been smeared twice next to the door, with the last two letters written in the style of the Germanic runes of Hitler's SS organization.

Police spokesman Michael Lindner said it was unclear when the graffiti was written, but that it must have been before the blaze because the building had been cordoned off and under police guard ever since.

The building has been shored up by engineers and police were able to enter it with sniffer dogs on Wednesday to look for any signs of arson.

Police had announced on Tuesday they were investigating a statement by two Turkish girls (more...), aged eight and nine, who claim to have seen a man setting fire to a wooden stick in a corridor of the building and then running away. Police said they would try to create a photofit picture of the possible arsonist from the statements of the two girls, but stressed it was too soon to draw any conclusions about the cause of the fire.

Turkish media are speculating that the fire was laid by German neo-Nazis. If the suspicion is confirmed, Germany will have to brace itself for the same international condemnation that followed the 1993 killing of five Turkish women and girls in a fire in Solingen, western Germany, which was set by German youths.

Reports of Far-Right Threats

Turkish newspaper Zaman reported on Wednesday that the Kaplan family living in the century-old apartment block had been threatened by young German right-wing extremists after they moved into the building.

The newspaper cited relatives of the victims living in the southern Turkish town of Gaziantep. The threats were received after a Turkish coffee shop was opened in the ground floor of the building, said Ismail Ceylan, a family relative. He said the Kaplans had not taken the threats seriously.

Bild newspaper cited police as saying that there had been an arson attack on the building in August 2006, when unknown assailants threw a cobblestone and two petrol bombs into an empty pub on the ground floor. It caused only slight damage.

The incident is starting to cause diplomatic tensions between Germany and Turkey. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported Wednesday that German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble criticized the Turkish ambassador to Germany, Ali Irtemçelik, for having said it was "strange" that German politicians had ruled out any xenophobic motive before any cause had been established.

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An 11-month-old boy is perilously dropped from the blazing third floor of the apartment building to safety below.
Read the rest at International Spiegel Online