On 12 September 2001, the "Soko Halbmond" was established in Nuremberg. The task force was based at the Police Headquarters of Mittelfranken, Nuremberg Criminal Investigation Division. According to the Bavarian NSU Committee of Inquiry, this was where "the Bavarian cases [...] were bundled together as a coordination office and aligned with the special task force in Hamburg." By the time "Soko Halbmond" was founded, four people had already been murdered with the same weapon. All four were of Turkish origin. While neo-Nazis were ruled out as potential perpetrators, the victims were publicly discredited as drug dealers, as investigations focused exclusively on "organized crime." Even after the seventh murder of a foreign business owner in Germany, newspapers continued to publicly speculate about alleged drug deals. The FAZ of 18 June 2005, for example, stated: "There is speculation as to whether mafia killers from the international drug scene are behind the murders — perhaps seeking to silence defectors. However, there is no evidence whatsoever for this."
