Police apologize four years after racist attack in Germany's Hanau

More than four years after nine people were killed in a racist attack in the German city of Hanau that sent shockwaves through the country, the local police chief has publicly apologized to the relatives of the victims.

It comes after state Interior Minister Roman Poseck issued an apology to the victims' families in June.

"I endorse this apology," Daniel Muth, the current police chief of the South-East Hesse district that includes Hanau, told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper in comments to be published on Wednesday.

On February 19, 2020, a 43-year-old far-right extremist shot dead nine people in Hanau, to the east of Frankfurt, including in a shisha bar. He then went on to kill his mother and himself.

All victims except the mother had a migration background.

A group that includes relatives of the victims and their supporters called Initiative February 19 has repeatedly accused the police of failings in the operation. They also decry the unwillingness by politicians to take responsibility after the attack as well as the lack of consequences.

Neither the state interior minister nor the police chief in office at the time had admitted to mistakes made by the police.

An investigative committee in the state parliament that looked into the attack listed 60 recommended actions in its 750-page final report.

Current police chief Muth on Tuesday admitted that police had "made mistakes in dealing with the victims and their families."

In the event of a politically motivated attack, control of the operation should have been handed over "to a particularly experienced police commander and his command staff," Muth said.

"That did not happen at the time."

Muth also said mistakes were made when notifying the relatives of the victims of the attack.

"The victims' relatives described very vividly what it did to them not to know whether their relatives were dead, alive or where they were. That must have been very difficult for them to bear," he said.