Former German spy chief finds himself coming under scrutiny
A FORMER German spy chief is being observed by the agency he used to run after being branded a right-wing extremist.
Hans-georg Maassen was head of Germany’s BFV domestic intelligence agency under Angela Merkel, and was until recently still a member of her CDU party.
Mr Maassen was dismissed as BFV head in 2018 after appearing to play down the threat of violence by rightwing extremists who at the time were rioting in an eastern German city.
In the five years since, Mr Maassen has become known for his increasingly radical commentary on the supposed threat immigration poses to Germany, becoming a hero to farright activists including some in the circles surrounding Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, the aristocrat who led a foiled coup attempt in 2022.
“Germany is clearly afraid of me,” Mr Maassen said on Twitter, adding the country was using the internal security agency to monitor him and the party he has founded.
Mr Maassen published a letter from the BFV, sent in response to a Freedom of Information request by his lawyer, confirming that he featured extensively in their databases tracking extremists.
The BFV, Germany’s equivalent of MI5, has gathered over 20 pages of allegedly questionable constitutional statements by their former boss.
The 61-year-old former spymaster was also accused of meeting leading members of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) to advise them about how to avoid observation by his own intelligence agency.
After leaving the BFV in 2018, Mr Maassen ran as an MP for the Christian Democrats (CDU) in Saxony, where he was accused by his former agency of using “antisemitic stereotypes to attract votes”.
Mr Maassen resigned his CDU membership a few days ago, posting a picture of his membership card cut up and declaring that the conservative opposition party was “committed to a neo-socialist society that has the potential to slide into totalitarianism”.
He also wrote an essay calling for “painful operations” on migration entitled “chemotherapy for Germany,” likening immigrants to a form of cancer.
Mr Maassen was elected as chairman of the “Values Union”, a former fringe group within the CDU that is now running as an independent party. It has said it would go into coalition with the AFD.
The new party’s deputy chairman is a former vice admiral who was criticised for praising Putin’s Russia as “a Christian country” that is needed as a bulwark against China.
In light of the new information, the German MP Martina Renner called for a parliamentary committee in the Bundestag to investigate Mr Maassen’s activities during his period of service.