Spy veteran woos far-Right support from Merkel’s CDU

A FORMER German spy chief who resigned following a clash with Angela Merkel over neo-Nazis has launched a comeback that is causing a headache for her Christian Democrat party (CDU) ahead of September’s election.

Hans-Georg Maassen was head of Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence service until 2018, when he was shuffled into early retirement after picking a public fight with Mrs Merkel over farRight riots in the eastern city of Chemnitz. As intelligence chief, Mr Maassen claimed publicly there was no evidence to support comments by the chancellor that neo-Nazis had “hunted down” people of migrant appearance in the streets.

Evidence later emerged that showed Mr Maassen’s claims to be false, but the incident propelled him to fame. Now he is staging a return as a politician for Mrs Merkel’s party, and has secured nomination as one of its candidates in September’s elections.

CDU leaders did their best to dissuade his local constituency association from choosing a man many believe is a farRight sympathiser. But while the party leadership and most of its supporters in western Germany regard much of what Mr Maassen says as beyond the pale, he enjoys considerable support among CDU voters in the east: the Suhl-Schmalkalden constituency in the eastern state of Thuringia voted for him by a majority of 86 per cent, leaving the party stuck with a candidate it does not want.

“He is a marginal figure in the democratic spectrum with whom most Christian Democrats have little in common,” Karin Prien, a member of the CDU federal board, said after the vote, while senior party figure Serap Güler raged: “How can you be so crazy and just throw Christian democratic values overboard?”