German spy agency ‘failed to act’ on reports about far-right’s youth wing

▶ Scandal could strengthen calls for the sacking of BfV head, Hans-Georg Maassen

Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency failed to act on two reports warning of security threats posed by the country’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The reports, which came to light yesterday, could strengthen calls for the sacking of BfV head Hans-Georg Maassen, whose critics say he downplayed anti-migrant violence in the eastern city of Chemnitz. They also questioned his relationship with far-right political figures.

This scandal comes as Mr Maassen was reported by Der Spiegel to be lobbying for a doubling of the size of his agency by 2021, to meet the challenges posed by security threats.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who leads the Bavarian conservatives, will meet tomorrow to discuss Mr Maassen’s fate with Andrea Nahles, the head of the Social Democratic Party, a junior partner in Germany’s coalition government who has called for the spymaster to be fired.

“Mr Maassen needs to go, and I tell you, he will go,” Mrs Nahles said on Saturday.

Mr Maassen was criticised this month when he questioned the authenticity of a video appearing to show far-right extremists attacking migrants in Chemnitz, although he later claimed his comments were misunderstood.

Police are investigating charges of anti-migrant violence and several cases of people making the Nazi salute during protests which erupted in Chemnitz after an Iraqi man and a Syrian were arrested in connection with the fatal stabbing of a German man.

Mr Maassen’s relationship with the far-right has been questioned in the past. This year, a former leader of the AfD’s youth wing, Franziska Schreiber, said Mr Maassen advised one-time AfD chairwoman, Frauke Petry, on how the party could avoid being put under surveillance by his agency.

Mr Maassen denied giving such counsel.

The far-right AfD became the second largest party in parliament in last year’s elections, serving as the German version of a populist electoral wave sweeping Europe.

Last week, the BfV was forced to deny a story by public broadcaster ARD that Mr Maassen had told an AfD politician about parts of a report from his agency before it was published.

The latest allegations centre on briefings sent by security officials in two German states – Bremen and Lower Saxony – to Mr Maassen’s agency expressing concern about AfD youth chapters and their suspected ties to extremists, which the BfV allegedly ignored.

Both states put the AfD groups under surveillance, but their reports “were left untouched at the BfV headquarters for six months”, according to a senior intelligence source.

It was not clear if or when those reports were brought to the attention of Mr Maassen himself.

A spokesman for the interior ministry, which oversees the BfV agency, declined to comment on the Spiegel story.

Mr Maassen’s career has been one defined by controversy. In 2002, while an employee of the interior ministry, he tried to prevent a German national being held at the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba from coming home on the grounds that his citizenship had lapsed.

After the 2016 Berlin Christmas market terrorist attack, in which 12 people lost their lives, Mr Maassen said reports that his intelligence agency had undercover agents in organisations linked to the plot were false.

Yet documents proving this was the case surfaced this year.