Halit Yozgat was born in 1985 in Holländische Straße in Kassel. He was the fourth child born to his parents, Ayşe and İsmail Yozgat, who come from Turkey. After finishing school, Halit Yozgat opened an internet café in Holländische Straße in 2004 with the support of his family. Alongside his work there, he attended evening school with the goal of attaining his A-levels. He wanted to study computer science.
On 6 April 2006, İsmail Yozgat was supposed to take over for his son in the internet café. He was late that day. His son had given him money so that he could choose a present for his birthday the following day. When İsmail Yozgat arrived at the café, he found his son lifeless behind the counter. On 27 November 2017, İsmail Yozgat and his wife Ayşe testified to the Hessian committee of enquiry. He recreated the crime scene by arranging chairs and tables in the committee meeting room. He described:
‘Halit wasn’t at the table. And I wondered if he might have gone into the back room. But there were two red spots right there. “What happened, my son?”, I say. I’d never seen a gunshot wound in my life. I could see that he had two gunshot wounds on the left. I shouted, “Halit, Halit, what are you doing?” He didn’t answer. I laid him down, gently. I wanted to make a phone call, but couldn’t. I went out through the door, there’s a Turkish café. “Friends, something’s happened to my Halit.” Three, four, five minutes later we cleared away the table, then the police came and took me out.’
A few weeks after the murder of Halit Yozgat, people from the Yozgat family organised a funeral march. Several thousand people, including relatives of several victims of the series of racist murders carried out by the National Socialist Underground (NSU), not yet known as such at the time, marched through the city centre on 6 May 2006 and called for the murders to be investigated. They named racism as an obvious motive for the series of murders and demanded: ‘No 10th victim!’
Halit Yozgat was the last known murder victim in the NSU’s series of racist murders. He was killed just two days after Mehmet Kubaşık had been shot dead. In this case too – almost six years after the first known murder in the series – the authorities once again investigated the family. Although there was no evidence of a motive within the family in this case, either, the family was bugged and an undercover investigator was even deployed.
At the same time, it emerged that a full-time employee of the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution was in the internet café during the murder: Andreas Temme, who was responsible at the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution for managing undercover agents investigating the extreme right, among other things. The Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution refused to conduct in-depth investigations, including the questioning of undercover agents that Temme had led.
To this day, Andreas Temme’s role in the NSU complex remains unclear. He claims to have been in the internet café by chance and not to have seen Halit Yozgat’s body. Although Temme had to leave the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, he remained a civil servant.
Halit Yozgat’s family is still fighting for answers and recognition. İsmail Yozgat did not celebrate his birthday for 15 years. He has begun celebrating it again at the request of his grandchildren.
