German arson case: police doubt racist motive 01/04/2008 00:00

A police spokesman said the neo-Nazi thesis had gone cold and the evidence suggested that the culprit may have attempted to cast blame on neo-Nazis.

A police spokesman said the neo-Nazi thesis had gone cold and the evidence suggested that the culprit may have attempted to cast blame on neo-Nazis.

Stuttgart -- Police investigating an arson attack on a German apartment block with many Turkish tenants cast doubt Monday on suggestions that the fire was set by neo-Nazis.

A resident quickly put out the early Saturday fire in a pram parked in the public foyer of the building. Police in Backnang, a town 25 kilometers north-east of Stuttgart, then examined swastikas spray-painted on the building's rear wall.

A police spokesman said Monday the neo-Nazi thesis had gone cold and the evidence suggested that the culprit may have attempted to cast blame on neo-Nazis.

The two swastikas were drawn with the tips pointed counter-clockwise, rather than clockwise like a Nazi swastika.

"It's not terribly likely that neo-Nazis would be unfamiliar with the shape of a Nazi swastika," the police spokesman said, adding that police were now investigating claims of a feud between some of the tenants and neighbors in the street.

Five of the 25 persons in the building suffered ill effects from inhaling toxic fumes.

The fire set off fresh alarm in Germany's Turkish minority, which has been haunted since 1993 by the nightmare of homicidal racists setting fire to their homes at night. In that year, five women were killed in Solingen in such a fire. The attackers were punished.

A residential-building fire in the city of Ludwigshafen in February this year killed nine ethnic Turks, but police say there is no evidence it was deliberately lit.

DPA with Expatica