Germany explores far-right links in military and police

GERMANY is to investigate its own civil service, police and military for farright links.

The move is part of a wider crackdown following a series of incidents, including the assassination of a politician and a failed terror attack on a synagogue by a lone far-right gunman.

“Germany has to become more active against the far-right,” Horst Seehofer, the interior minister, said at a press conference to introduce the measures yesterday.

The radical Right is responsible for more than half of politically motivated crimes in Germany, he said.

Under the new plans, 600 new positions are to be created at the police and domestic intelligence service to focus exclusively on combating the far-right. A special “central office for far-right extremists in public service” will be set up by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the BFV, to uncover cases in the police, military and civil service.

The move comes after it emerged earlier this month that a sergeant in the German army’s special forces had been suspended from duty on suspicion of far-right activism.

Two staff officers are reportedly being investigated for showing the Hitler salute at a private ceremony, involving the suspended sergeant. None of the soldiers involved has been named.

There have also been a number of incidents in the German police. In Frankfurt, one officer has been arrested over a letter with neo-nazi threats to a prominent lawyer.