BERLIN, April 27 (UPI) -- Germany has issued an apology for the deaths of 10 people -- eight Turks, one Greek person and a German police officer -- killed by neo-Nazis.
Markus Loning, human rights ombudsman to the German government, made the apology Thursday in front of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Today's Zaman reported.
"I would like to expressly repeat this apology here before this forum," Loning stated. "Prosecution authorities failed to identify the motives and therefore did not catch the murderers."
A previously unheard of neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Underground is allegedly responsible for the slayings, which took place between 2000 and 2007.
The slayings were "without doubt the worst human rights contraventions in Germany in the last decades," Loning said.
Loning's apology came after Turkish U.N. Ambassador Oguz Demiralp called on Germany to take steps to curb far-right violence against foreigners, saying Germany was growing "increasingly anxious" in the face of "growing xenophobia."
