German spy chief removed from post

BERLIN — The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency lost his job Tuesday after his remarks downplaying anti-migrant violence became a battleground between Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative critics.

The ouster of Hansgeorg Maassen is the latest political aftershock resulting from the influx of more than a million refugees into Germany since 2015, which has boosted right-wing populism in Germany and beyond.

Critics have long questioned whether Maassen, who took charge of the Bf V spy agency in 2012, was still suitable for the post over his handling of the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack and his contacts with the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

Maassen’s decision to openly contradict Merkel in an interview with the mass-circulation daily Bild this month appears to have sealed his fate.

Responding to violent right-wing protests following the killing of a German man, allegedly by migrants, in the eastern city of Chemnitz, Maassen said his agency had no reliable evidence that foreigners were “hunted” down in the streets — a term Merkel had used.

He added that “according to my cautious evaluation, there are good reasons for thinking that it is deliberate misinformation, possibly in order to distract the public from the murder in Chemnitz.”

Maassen provided no evidence to back up his assertion, but his comments were seized upon by the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which called him “a very good top civil servant who had the courage to criticize Merkel’s completely failed asylum policy” and now faces a “witch hunt.”