07 October 2020
A report by Germany's domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV) has detailed hundreds of anti-constitutional far-right incidents in the police and the military, yet the country's interior minister has apparently sought to downplay the significance of the findings.
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Hundreds of rightwing extremist incidents by German security services revealed (The Guardian, link)
"Politicians and anti-racist campaigners have called on the interior minister to take a detailed look at the issues as a matter of urgency amid concerns that authorities have consistently ignored signals that violent extremists might be trying to infiltrate the uniformed services.
Seehofer told a news conference in Berlin on Tuesday morning that 99% of security personnel “stand firmly anchored in the law”. He said: “We are only dealing here with a minor number of cases.”
Anti-racism campaigners poured scorn on his analysis, after it was revealed that there were 1,064 cases among military personnel, compiled separately by the military secret service MAD, 550 of which are being actively pursued, and 370 separate incidents among police and intelligence officers.
Between January 2017 and the end of March 2020, there were 319 suspected cases of rightwing extremism on a state level, in addition to 58 suspected cases among federal security services, including 44 cases in the police, six in the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and a handful in the customs authorities, the office for the protection of the constitution and the federal intelligence service."
A timeline produced by DW earlier this year includes a number of incidents that have involved or implicated security forces. See: Right-wing terror in Germany: A timeline (link)
Another DW report, published the day before Seehofer announced the BfV report, highlighted that officials working in a team tasked with monitoring far-right extremism had engaged in far-right activity themselves. See: German state suspects intelligence staff of far-right activity (link)
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