Racist Terror Attack in Hanau: The Arena Bar

On 19 February 2020 in Hanau, Germany, nine people were murdered in a racist terror attack. The victims were Said Nesar Hashemi, Sedat Gürbüz, Gökhan Gültekin, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar, and Kaloyan Velkov.

Bereaved family members gather outside the Hessen Parliament in Wiesbaden. (Arne Dedert/DPA)

After the attacks, the perpetrator, Tobias Rathjen, fled to his house, where he killed his mother, Gabriele Rathjen, before killing himself.

Forensic Architecture (FA), together with its Berlin-based sister agency FORENSIS, has been commissioned by the Initiative 19. Februar, and by the lawyer for the Gültekin family, to investigate a range of issues relating to the attacks, and to produce material for a range of purposes, across legal, political, and cultural forums, as well as media, activism, and advocacy.

The attack took place over two locations. The second of these was the Arena Bar and a neighbouring kiosk in Hanau-Kesselstadt.

The Arena Bar had a troubling history of over-policing, including surveillance, and frequent police raids. A criminal complaint from relatives and survivors, and a response from the public prosecutor’s office in Hanau, discussed the allegation that police conduct in relation to the bar was a contributing factor in the bar’s emergency exit being often locked. Reports suggest that the emergency exit had indeed been previously found to be locked.

Survivors of the attack, who attended the bar regularly, claim this practice of locking the emergency exit was routine, and that they believed it to be locked on the day of the attack.

For example, Piter Minnemann told Bild: “All we wanted was to get out. The question was how? We would have run to the emergency exit, but everyone knew it was locked. It had been locked for years.”

Said Etris Hashemi, brother of the victim Said Nesar Hashemi and himself a survivor of the attack, told WDR’s Monitor: “I can’t say that maybe everyone would have made it, but some of us would definitely have managed to run out of there.”

Armin Kurtović, father of the victim Hamza Kurtović, told RTL News: “If the emergency exit had been open, my son would not have died.”

FA, together with its Berlin-based sister agency FORENSIS, was asked by the Initiative 19. Februar and the bereaved families and survivors, to answer the question:

If any of those present in the Arena Bar at 10pm on 19 February 2020 had run toward the emergency exit, and it had been open, would they have had time to escape?

Our investigation concluded that:

if the emergency exit door at the Arena Bar was open on the night of the attack, 19 February 2020, and

if the five young men in the bar that night had attempted to escape through it during the attack,

then they could all have survived the attack.

Our scenario demonstrates that if the group of five men sat together in the Arena Bar on the night of the attack had moved toward the emergency exit, instead of the rear of the bar, they would have had time to reach the door before the perpetrator arrived.

This analysis demands answers to important questions: what led the group of five to expect the emergency exit locked on that night? How does a locked emergency exit relate to the Arena bar’s history of frequent raids, surveillance, and over-policing?