Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Radical Telegram News
AfD politicians’ homes searched
Bavarian AfD politicians express themselves in a Telegram chat in part radically. Two of them are now being visited by investigators because they are said to have publicly encouraged crimes. Public Prosecutor’s Office and State Criminal Police Office seize cell phones and data carriers.
After some radical statements by Bavarian AfD politicians in an internal Telegram chat, the investigators searched two apartments in Kulmbach and in the Upper Bavarian district of Miesbach. Cell phones and data carriers were already confiscated on Friday, said a spokesman for the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office and confirmed media reports.
“They want to see whether what I am accused of and what I deny can be found somewhere. But there is nothing to be found,” the “Frankenpost” quoted a Kulmbach AfD politician. According to a spokesman for the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the investigations are now directed against two suspects. They are said to have spoken in the Telegram group, which consists of around 200 members, in December 2020 and thereby fulfilled the criminal offense of public incitement to criminal offenses.
The Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation had made the scandal surrounding the statements public and at the beginning of December quoted some radical content from a closed Telegram group called “Alternative News Group Bavaria”. The terms coup, revolution and civil war are said to have been used there.
Complete chat history should bring clarity
The head of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bavarian state parliament, Ulrich Singer, attached importance to the finding that the AfD or the parliamentary group did not operate the chat group. “There is – or was – a purely private, closed, regular-table chat that was neither operated by the parliamentary group nor by the party,” he said in the state parliament at the beginning of December.
In a turbulent state parliament debate, speakers from the CSU, Free Voters, Greens, SPD and FDP decidedly rejected the statements shortly after they became known. They accused the AfD of spreading hatred and agitation – and condemned the chat messages as an attack on democracy.
The investigators of the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (LKA) and the Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism at the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Munich are now hoping to get information about the entire chat process from the confiscated cell phones. “Whether the suspicion is confirmed can be assessed at the earliest after evaluating the evidence seized,” said the spokesman. “Then it can also be assessed whether other people may have committed a criminal offense.”