Suspect arrested in Germany for racist fire at refugee home 30 years ago

Published on: 04/04/2022 – 13:56 Thirty years after the events, a German far-right activist was arrested on Monday on suspicion of being the author of a fire against a shelter for refugees in which a Ghanaian national perished. The investigation into the Saarlouis fire resumed in April 2020 following new clues. According to the German weekly Spiegel, the alleged perpetrator was a well-known figure in the Saarland neo-Nazi scene. A far-right German militant suspected of being the author of a fire against a shelter for refugees which had killed one person more than 30 years ago was arrested on Monday April 4 in the west of Germany, announced the federal prosecutor’s office. The facts date back to September 19, 1991, a year after German reunification: the fire had broken out in a home for asylum seekers located in Saarlouis, a town of 35,000 inhabitants located near the French border. According to a statement from the prosecution, the suspect identified as Peter S. is “strongly suspected of murder, attempted murder of 20 people and arson causing death”. Prosecutors accuse him of having, by means of a can of gasoline, set fire to the home which then housed 21 people and to have acted because of his “extreme right and racist convictions”. Born in 1971 and originally from Saarlouis, Peter S. was a well-known figure in the Saarland neo-Nazi scene, claims the weekly re Spiegel. A “leadership role” within the extremist milieu The fire had spread from the stairwell to the entire building. If 18 people had managed to take shelter, two other people had suffered broken bones while jumping out of the window and a Ghanaian national, Samuel Yeboah, had died of his injuries in the fire. Peter S. had from the start been suspected of being involved in the arson, but investigations had been dropped decades for lack of sufficient evidence. At the time, the investigators attributed to him a “role of leader” within this extremist environment. present were future members of the neo-Nazi group NSU, responsible for a dozen assassinations in the 2000s, mainly of foreigners. Investigations into the Saarlouis fire resumed in April 2020 following new clues. The suspect’s apartment was notably searched in early 2021, according to Spiegel. In the early 1990s, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, several attacks against homes for asylum seekers had affected Germany, particularly in the former GDR. This rise in xenophobia was particularly illustrated by racist riots in Hoyerswerda, a city in Saxony, in September 1991, around 500 people had attacked a refugee home with Molotov cocktails and projectiles, injuring dozens. With AFP