The Beginning of the trial against Rolf Z. on Monday March 14th (Court listing: 529 KS 1/16)
Date of the first day of the trial: Monday March 14th 2016 at 9 o’clock
Room 500 (or 618), Criminal Court (Landgericht), Turmstraße 91, 10559 Berlin-Moabit
pre-announced dates of the trial: always Mondays and Wednesdays 9 o’clock a.m. on
16.3., 21.3., 23.3., 4.4., 6.4., 11.4., 13.4., 18.4. und 25.4.
In the night of September 19th to the 20th in Ringbahnstraße in the Berlin district of Neukölln the 31 year old British laywer Luke Holland was shot and killed. On the evening of the 20th the purported killer, 62 year old Rolf Z. was arrested. He had been seen by witnesses immediately after the crime, calmly walking away from the site of the crime openly carrying the gun he had used for the killing. Only through newspaper coverage it became known that in the course of his arrest and subsequent search of his appartement the police had found Nazi insignias such as pictures /posters and banners of Hitler there. To us it seems obvious, that this points to a neo-nazi world view of the accused Rolf Z..
In the night shortly before the killing, Rolf Z. had been visitor to a night club, called „Del Rex“, where he spoke in bad terms about the visitors main languages being Spanish and English and that hardly anybody around spoke German any more. The laywer of murder victim Luke Holland, Onur Özata, speaks of a right wing or xenophobic motivation of the crime as the most likely scenario. Even though Rolf Z. has not been publicly known as an organized Nazi, to us the urgent question arises, whether he might have killed following Neo-nazi „Lone Wulf“ concepts, as they have been circulated widely within Neo-Nazi groups in recent years. This all has to bee seen to the backdrop of an unprecedented series of racist killings by the Neo-Nazi terrorist organisation of the NSU („national socialist underground“) in the early 2000s. As to the similarity of the deed (walking up, killing and leaving without a word spoken to a randomly picked migrant) it has to be seriously concidered, whether the killing of Luke Holland was done to be perceived as standing in the tradition of the racist killings of the NSU.
Ulrike Schmidt, spokesperson for the „Initiative for a thourough investigation of the murder of Burak Bektaş“, says: „We ask ourselves: Do we witness in Berlin-Neukölln against the backdrop of the NSU murder series a new form of right wing terror?“
During the process the question will arise, whether there is some kind of connection between the killing of Luke Holland and the April 2012 killing of Burak Bektaş, both in Neukölln only 3.5 km apart. The accused Rolf Z. had been linked to the Burak killing by an informant to the police who in December 2013 pointed out Rolf Z.’s possession of illegal weaponry to the police and mentioned frequent visits of Rolf Z. to a brother’s basement shooting range in the neighborhood of Burak’s killing site. At the time a group of migrant youths had been shot at during the night of April 5th with 2 persons being seriously injured and 22 year old Burak Bektaş being killed. Up to now there are no results whatsoever of the police investigation.
We don’t want the public to be shown a de-politicized picture of a killing done by an individual with a psychiatric background. Contrary to all known witnesses statements the first reports in the yellow press had already claimed that a „noise row“ was the background of the murder.
We will follow the sessions of the public trial and call to the international press as well as antiracist and antifascist individuals and organisations to attend the trial as well.
We mobilize for a big demonstration on Saturday, April 9th, 2016 to commemorate the 4th anniversary of the killing of Burak Bektaş. We demand the truth to be known to the public about the killings of Burak Bektaş and Luke Holland. With the rally we want to let the public know our criticizms of the public prosecution and police investigation, that refuses to see any links or hints to a racist background of the murders.
We don’t want the public to be shown a de-politicized picture of a killing done by an individual with a psychiatric background. Contrary to all known witnesses statements the first reports in the yellow press had already claimed that a „noise row“ was the background of the murder.
We will follow the sessions of the public trial and call to the international press as well as antiracist and antifascist individuals and organisations to attend the trial as well.
We mobilize for a big demonstration on Saturday, April 9th, 2016 to commemorate the 4th anniversary of the killing of Burak Bektaş. We demand the truth to be known to the public about the killings of Burak Bektaş and Luke Holland. With the rally we want to let the public know our criticizms of the public prosecution and police investigation, that refuses to see any links or hints to a racist background of the murders.
We want to know the truth!
March 2016, Initiative for a thourough investigation of the murder of Burak Bektaş