Thursday, December 16, 2021
Investigation stopped
Federal Prosecutor: Hanau assassin acted alone
Almost two years ago, nine people died in a racially motivated attack in the Hessian city of Hanau. After extensive investigations, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office closes its investigations. From the point of view of the authority, there are no indications of possible accomplices or assistants.
According to the Federal Prosecutor’s office, the Hanau attacker had no accomplices or assistants in the racist attack on February 19, 2020 with nine dead. The investigation into the attack against unknown persons had been discontinued, announced the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe.
“After exhausting all relevant investigative approaches, there were no sufficient factual indications for the involvement of other people as accomplices, instigators, assistants or confidants,” declared the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. As a result of the investigation, it can be stated that the 43-year-old Tobias R. shot a total of nine people and injured numerous other people, some seriously, “out of a racist motivation” on February 19, 2020 between 9:55 p.m. and 10:01 p.m. in Hanau.
He then returned to the home he lived in, where he first killed his mother and then himself with a gun. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Criminal Police Office had investigated around 300 pieces of information and clues to clarify the background to the attack, including the suggestions made by the victim’s lawyers. Numerous contact persons were closely examined with whom Tobias R. had been in contact in his last years.
“A total of over 400 witnesses were heard and several hundred evidence examined by forensic technology,” it said. “There were no indications that other people could have been privy to Tobias R.’s attack plans.” Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbüz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtovic, Vili-Viorel Paun, Fatih Saracoglu, Ferhat Unvar and Kaloyan Velkov were among those killed in the attack. The Federal Prosecutor General had pulled the investigation on the night of the crime.
An investigative committee of the Hessian state parliament is currently running, which primarily investigates the question of whether there was an authority failure before, during or after the crime. In the second public meeting of the committee this Friday, three other relatives of attack victims will be heard as witnesses, after which there will be two more public meetings on December 20 and January 21, at which relatives will have their say. They had come together in the “February 19th Hanau Initiative”, which calls for complete clarification and the consequences of the crime.