State service can't replace clarity on murders

German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have hit the right note at the state ceremony for the victims of right-wing extremism but that is no substitute for an explanation as to why the authorities failed so miserably: "This commemorative service was different because Ismail Yozgat, the father of one of the victims, made a speech. … People like Ismail Yozgat are invisible in our society. They don't make speeches at receptions, they don't appear on talk shows. … Angela Merkel shifted the focus to the double suffering of the families of the victims. … None of this was wrong, but it's too little. Because this series of murders exposes much more than Mölln or Solingen [arson attacks by right-wing extremists against foreigners in 1992 and 1993] a failure of the state. It is a disastrous failure of the police and above all the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which hindered rather than aided the investigations. To promise better coordination among the authorities, as Merkel has done, is too little. Why did the investigators look everywhere but in the neo-Nazi milieu? Why was the neo-Nazi trio able to go underground? The answers are not yet forthcoming. We owe them to the victims."

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