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meIn recent months, various events in the Essen and Mülheim area had attracted nationwide attention and criticism from the police. The case of Omar Ayoub, 23, from Essen, for example, who made serious accusations against police officers of abuse and racism in April. Or the case of the Agbonlahor family, originally from Nigeria, who met in March. They claimed to have been beaten by police, as reported by RTL.
WELT’s investigation has now shown: None of the 30 officers who were suspended last week in connection with the far-right and racist messaging chat scandal were involved in these incidents.
All the suspects are or were employees of the Essen police headquarters, most of them in the Mülheim guard. The chat groups were exposed in the course of an investigation into the alleged betrayal of secrets by a police officer to a journalist.
As WELT has learned from various sources in security circles, it was not, as reported by some media, the investigations against the so-called clan crime. Rather, it is said that the police officer in question relayed information from the investigations against the rock criminal milieu. The journalist in question does not work for media in which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is interested.
In contrast to the “Nordkreuz” network or the threatening letters signed with “NSU 2.0” – cases where police officers are also investigated – the chat groups in Essen / Mülheim are not on the verge of terrorism. It is not yet clear which character they had in their place. It is unclear if these chats were specifically organized for the sharing of far-right content or if organizational issues were discussed there.
An answer to these questions could also be illuminating for the role of the 18 police officers classified as “passive” members of the chat. You are not accused of having shared criminal content, only of not having reported it; they are subject to disciplinary proceedings, but not criminal investigation.
State Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) confirmed last week that there are also some with immigration backgrounds among the officials involved. According to information from WELT, these three officials, whose families come from former guest worker countries, are among the “passive” members, as is the leader of the service group involved.
The material exchanged includes photos of Hitler or a montage of images of someone pointing a gun at a black child. However, it is not known whether, among the more than 100 image files incriminated, some also include the motive “clan crime”. That could also be revealing.
“Essential element of the practiced idea of the caliphate”
A brochure published by Essen Police Headquarters for internal training purposes provides information on how this discourse is partially carried out within the police. “Clans of Arab families: history, analysis, approaches to combat” is the title; The author is Dorothee Dienstbühl, professor of criminology and sociology at the University of Applied Sciences for Public Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The cover of the brochure
Quelle: Repro: Deniz Yücel
He wrote the foreword with Essen Police Chief Frank Richter. The subject: the Mhallami, an Arabic-speaking ethnic group originally from Turkey and immigrated through Lebanon, and who is the center of attention when it comes to clan crimes in this country. In turn, the city of Essen is the focal point alongside Berlin.
At first, Dienstbühl wrote that “by no means all members that can be assigned to a clan” are criminals. But immediately afterwards the “basic thought patterns” are also said to be “anchored” in family members who are not criminally conspicuous. It follows a sociocultural presentation of the Mhallami in almost 20 pages, which deals with his concept of honor, gender roles, his relationship with religion and state authorities, and that reads like a mixture of “The Godfather” (“The honesty is the basis of all Trade relations within the clan ”) and“ Expeditions to the animal kingdom ”(“ Clan members react with fear of dogs ”).
Sometimes it sounds as if the author has tried to gather as many keywords as possible in a very small space: “Showing (supposed) luxury is not just an indication, but a necessary narrative for the clans. All power factors and relationships are based on consent and money. In this context, state transfer payments for clan members are important: they represent an essential element of the practiced idea of the caliphate. “
When asked by WELT if they considered a connection between the chat scandal and the clan’s crime speech conceivable, Dienstbühl replied: “These issues should be separated. The chat started in 2012, at which time the topic was far from being in the media focus. In fact, there are five chat groups, the oldest of which was founded in 2012 and the most relevant in 2015.
However, it is unclear when the incriminated content emerged. When asked if he thought it possible that this brochure could have inadvertently led to the consolidation of racist views, at least among some of the suspended police officers, Dienstbühl replied: He published this post in 2019 for members of the “Special Structural Organization Action Plan Clan “Created in Essen. As far as they know, the employees of this unit did not participate in these chat groups; they could not understand the charge implicit in this” question.
In any case, she is not pursuing an inadmissible generalization of mhallami. However, non-criminal family members also kept silent “often out of fear, solidarity, but also distrust of outsiders.” Furthermore, in these families “patriarchal and hierarchical structures left little room for individual development.” Essen police spokesman Christoph Wickhorst also denies that the presumption of innocence has been waived in this brochure. Internal training is not based solely on this brochure.
Greens criticize “undifferentiated” representations
Author and psychologist Ahmad Mansour, whom Dienstbühl named as one of his sources when asked, does not wish to comment further on this brochure. It only says in principle: “My approach would be to work much more preventively and convince people to lead a law-abiding life. But you shouldn’t act on clichéd ideas. ”
Verena Schäffer, national policy spokesperson for the Green parliamentary group in the NRW state parliament, becomes clearer. He considers the brochure to be a generalization, and makes a possible connection to the chat scandal: Essen police have to face the question “whether the spread of stereotyped and undifferentiated representations about so-called clans, as in this brochure, does not lead to an internal climate contributed by sharing racist content through chat or without contradicting it ”.
Under Interior Minister Reul, North Rhine-Westphalia was the first federal state to introduce a periodic review by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution for potential commissioners. In addition, since 2018 they have had to answer questions about “value orientation”. He has now appointed special representatives for right-wing extremism in the police force and has made fighting clan crime a priority for the police. “I am aware that there is a risk of serving xenophobic resentments and having entire relatives,” he said in August.
He has not commented on the question of whether this risk also applies to police officers.
