Wiesbaden (dpa/lhe) – According to an insider, the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) did not have the murderer of the Kassel district president on the screen at least in the years 2011 to 2016. “The name Stephan Ernst meant nothing to me, I first heard it in connection with the murder,” said the then head of intelligence gathering at the LfV on Wednesday in the investigative committee of the Hessian state parliament in Wiesbaden.
He classified the right-wing extremist scene as highly dangerous. When he took office in 2011, the network of informants and other informants, among other things, was insufficient, and this was improved in the years that followed. The President of the LfV in the years 2015 to 2022, Robert Schäfer, also stated on Wednesday that he had initiated many reforms during his term of office.
In the 1990s, Ernst attracted attention with a knife attack on an imam and an attempted attack on a home for asylum seekers with a pipe bomb, after which no more acts of violence were known. His file was blocked for official use by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 2015. On the night of June 2, 2019, the right-wing extremist shot the Kassel district president.
The state parliament investigation committee was set up in 2020. His job is to investigate the role played by the Hessian security authorities in the murder case. The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court sentenced Ernst to life imprisonment last year for murder. Markus H., accused of aiding and abetting, received a suspended sentence for violating the Weapons Act.