Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Death threat against Kretschmer
Six people in the sights of the investigators
After a raid on plans to murder Saxony’s prime minister, five men and one woman have been identified as suspects. Weapons were also found. Kretschmer sees the blow against the radicalized anti-vaccination campaigns as a sign of how “defenseless the rule of law is”.
After the death threats against Saxony’s CDU Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer on the Internet, the police took action against the first suspects. Around 140 officers searched the homes of five men between 32 and 64 years old and a 34-year-old woman in Dresden as well as another property in Heidenau (Saxon Switzerland). Numerous pieces of evidence were seized, including crossbows, weapons and weapon parts, as reported by the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) Saxony and the Dresden Public Prosecutor’s Office. In the Pieschen district of Dresden, the Telegram chat group called “Dresden Offline Networking” on weapons also contained special units of the LKA included. There have been no arrests so far.
The investigators were aware of the death threats in the Telegram communications service through a report in the ZDF magazine “Frontal” last week. According to the public prosecutor’s office, the accused are suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence that could endanger the state as members of the Telegram chat group “Dresden Offline Networking”. They combine the rejection of vaccinations, the state and the current corona policy, have expressed murder plans against Kretschmer and other representatives of the state government in chat and at real meetings. According to the Sächsische Zeitung, Sebastian A.’s apartment was searched, among other things. A. is a neo-Nazi known in Dresden.
In an interview with Welt TV, CDU state interior minister Roland Wöller spoke of a “blow against right-wing extremism”. As a result of the operation, he sees “clearly right-wing extremist activities”. It is important that the public prosecutor and the police “investigate now and also initiate the proceedings and then quickly bring to a conclusion that we have a conviction”. The rule of law had “shown today in the Free State how defensive it is,” said Prime Minister Kretschmer at an appointment in Leipzig. “Threats against public officials, be it mayors, municipal and district administrators, scientists or journalists, are unacceptable, will not be tolerated and will be pursued with all their might.” Freedom of expression is a matter of course, but when violence comes into play, “a limit has been crossed which we will not tolerate”.
Officials will find what they are looking for in the “Administrator” apartment
Weapons were seized in the apartment of the “administrator”, a 42-year-old. Two officers led the man, who was masked with a black balaclava and hood and had his arms crossed behind his back, out of the house to a police car. Two of the three crossbows seized are sports equipment, the other is still being checked to see whether it falls under the weapons law, said a spokeswoman for the attorney general.
The operation, which began at 6 a.m., continued in the afternoon. The workplace of a suspect in the nearby small town of Heidenau was also searched. The suspects are being questioned, said an LKA spokesman. In addition, the seized cell phones, tablets, computers and storage media would be evaluated. Further measures are not excluded. “The chat group was much bigger.”
For Interior Minister Wöller, the mission was “a clear signal: the rule of law is capable of acting”. Closed chat groups are not an anonymous space for preparing crimes and do not protect against criminal prosecution, he said. The LKA had tracked down the perpetrators of the chat group, although this had already been deleted. “Telegram must not be a legal vacuum in which violent right-wing extremists can commit crimes unmolested.” According to him, the police are monitoring these networks. You are dealing with a new phenomenon and loopholes, he told Welt TV. It is the task of the federal government to close these together with the states. The providers of the messenger services “must also be liable for this content and not just delete illegal and criminal content”. The investigative authorities needed real names for success.
In his first government declaration in Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz sharply opposed hatred and extremist tendencies in the Corona crisis. “We will not put up with the fact that a tiny minority of uninhibited extremists are trying to impose their will on our entire society,” said the SPD politician in the Bundestag.