For years, Michael von Dolsperg provided German intelligence with information from the neo-Nazi scene. But when the NSU terror trio came to light, his file was shredded. Why? Could details he provided have prevented the murder spree?
The sprawling wooden house, surrounded by a few out-buildings, stands out vividly against the snowy landscape. It is called “Snaret” — in English: “Grove.” Michael von Dolsperg moved to this remote corner of Sweden’s Värmland County from Lower Saxony 12 years ago. The mailbox on the main road is three and half kilometers (2.2 miles) away and the nearest bakery is in Filipstad, 25 kilometers distant. At night, wolves sometimes prowl cross the yard. For someone looking to turn their back on the past, it is a perfect spot.
For many years, Snaret was Dolsperg’s own patch of wilderness paradise. Young people from all over Europe came to camp on his property. But last October, he was rudely awoken from his dream of a quiet life in the country.
Now, he keeps a wooden club next to his bed. Not because of the wolves, but because of German neo-Nazis out for revenge. Before Michael von Dolsperg, 39, moved to the Swedish outback, he was an informant for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. His alias was Tarif.
Blonde and bearded, Dolsperg stands next to his cast-iron stove and lights a cigarette. He gazes out through the kitchen window at the forest. One evening, his phone rang. “We’re coming soon,” breathed a voice down the line. Dolsperg immediately took down the signpost to his house on the main road, but the phone call left him shaken. “I know from the past that the neo-Nazi scene is well-networked in Sweden,” he says. “They know exactly where I am.”
The fact that Dolsperg’s informant past has now been exposed is a disaster for German intelligence as well. Tarif wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill mole in the neo-Nazi scene. His case raises a number of questions about the investigation into the NSU neo-Nazi terrorist group, which murdered 10 people between 2000 and 2006. One question stands out above all: Why did Tarif’s file mysteriously disappear from the BfV archive?
