Right-Wing Investigations
According to SPIEGEL, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has declared the entire AfD a suspected case of right-wing extremism. This means that the agency can also observe the party using intelligence means.
However, in an ongoing legal dispute before the Cologne Administrative Court, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has committed itself to refrain from intelligence surveillance of members of the federal, state and European parliaments for the time being. The same applies to candidates in the upcoming elections in 2021.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) is also currently not allowed to disclose its classification as a "suspected case".
The basis for the observation of the entire AfD is a roughly 1000-page report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Since the beginning of 2019, the office's lawyers and experts on right-wing extremism have compiled a great deal of evidence of suspected violations of the free democratic order.
According to SPIEGEL information, the report is to provide evidence that the AfD violates the guarantee of human dignity and the principle of democracy in the Basic Law. Several hundred speeches and statements by officials at all party levels are to serve as evidence.
The Corona agitator Attila Hildmann has apparently disappeared. The German magazine SPIEGEL stated that they learned from investigators, that they have not known where the conspiracy ideologue is since the beginning of February.
On Friday, the Berlin-Tiergarten district court, therefore, issued a warrant for Hildmann's arrest. The investigators accuse him, among other things, of incitement of popular hatred, insult, threat and public incitement to commit crimes.
Génération Identitaire, a French far-right group declaring a "war on migrants", faces dissolution as the French government tries to tackle far-right extremism. A bill to fight Islamist extremism and separatism was approved by the National Assembly on February 16th.
The Saxony state association of the AfD (Alternative for Germany) has been classified as a case of observation by the German State Office for the Protection of the Constitution due to increasing right-wing movements.
While the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution does not want to decide on a formal classification until the beginning of next year, the third state association alongside Brandenburg and Thuringia is now a case for the security authorities.
Intelligence means can now also be used.
The scandal over right-wing extremist chats with the police has now also hit Baden-Württemberg. The police headquarters in Göppingen informed about the initiation of 17 disciplinary proceedings against officers of the riot police.
Due to the small group of chat participants, the public prosecutor's office discontinued the proceedings, as the number of people did not involve the public use or distribution of unconstitutional images.
German Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer (CSU) banned the neo-Nazi association "Sturmbrigade 44", which also calls itself "Wolfsbrigade 44", on Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning, the police searched objects of 13 club members in Hesse, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and North Rhine-Westphalia. According to Herbert Reul (CDU), Minister of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, the police seized cell phones and drugs, among other things, during the searches.
A German former Military Counterintelligence Service member (MAD) has been acquitted of the charge of treason. The 44-year-old military member had been accused to have warned a KSK-soldier of a raid by the attorney general as part of a right-wing extremism investigation.
The suspect himself had stated this during his interrogations and publicly. The MAD employee had now testified in court that the information had come from a leak at the Attorney General. Thereupon the public prosecutor withdrew the appeal proceedings.
Six people were arrested Thursday morning in a raid over the alleged plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. According to the FBI, the group had been planning the plot since June.
They had surveilled Whitmer's vacation home in August and September, and according to the FBI, they indicated that they wanted to take her hostage before the presidential election in November.
Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris, Brandon Caserta, and Ty Garbin were taken into custody in a raid on a house in suburban Detroit on Thursday morning
According to the Polish counterintelligence agency ABW, a German man was arrested last week in Poland. The suspect apparently has a right-wing background and a history of online hate speech. He was charged with possession of weapons and explosives. A further investigation is underway.
The verdicts have now been pronounced against three members of the right-wing comradeship. The background was violent attacks on a refugee shelter and on an alternative housing project.
The defendants were sentenced to imprisonment or suspended sentences.
The neo-nazi group "Nordadler" has been banned by Horst Seehofer, the German minister of the Interior, Building and Community. This is the third ban of a right-wing extremist group in 2020, following raids of group members in four different federal German states. The ministry has stated that the group had formed plans to create a community of right-wing extremists in rural areas and that they had pledged allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
Alice Cutter and her ex-partner Mark Hones have been sentenced to prison for being members of the banned terrorist far-right organization "National Action" in the United Kingdom. Cutter had previously entered a beauty contest called "Miss Hitler" under the name "Miss Buchenwald" and made jokes about gassing synagogues and other things. She has been sentenced to three years in prison, while her ex-partner has been sentenced to five and a half years.
The Federal Government announced on Wednesday that 13 right-wing potential threats have been added since January 2020. This increases the total number to 65 potential right-wing terrorists in Germany, a five-fold increase since the start of the registration in 2012.
However, the number is viewed with skepticism by critics: individual politicians are more likely to assume that the number is around 15,000 violent right-wing extremists.
Two police officers and former members of the Uniter association, which is monitored by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, are being investigated for unauthorized data queries from police computers.
The association is suspected of having formed a network of elite soldiers, military personnel, employees from security agencies and the private security industry. It is said that paramilitary training allegedly has been offered by the group.
Uniter is also repeatedly associated with right-wing terrorist groups such as "Nordkreuz", which are preparing for a coup and day X.