Idil Baydar had gone to the police eight times for the death threats he received, and each time they closed their case without doing anything. Now, an explosive claim suggests that the police had links to the death threats he faced.
The 45-year-old German comedian, of Turkish descent, said the threats began about a year and eight months ago. The most recent threat was just two days earlier, he told Fox News in a phone interview on July 25.
“I am not seen as a German,” she said. “I am a target … they want to kill me because of my Turkish descent … they don’t accept that I was born here, I socialized here.”
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Idil Baydar, a German comedian, says the police are linked to the death threats she received for calling extreme right-wing extremists.
(Courtesy of Idil Baydar)
Baydar, whose performances and videos criticize the country’s far-right extremists, whom he calls the Nazis, is among the prominent Germans who have been the subject of continuous death threats in the past two years.
An investigation published in the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau claims that police officers in Hesse, the state where Frankfurt is located, could be behind the threats. The allegations, which are under investigation, led to the resignation of the Hesse police chief.
The newspaper’s investigation examined the alleged death threats from the Neo-Nazi National Socialist Subnational, NSU 2.0, an extremist terrorist organization that is responsible for murdering 10 people between 2000 and 2007. The deaths were made to prominent Germans as early as August 2018. against Seda Basay Yildiz, a Turkish-speaking German lawyer, who received messages against her 2-year-old daughter.
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The investigation found that police information systems were repeatedly misused. In the summer of 2018, a police computer was used to access the personal information contained in the threats against Yildiz, the newspaper found.
In March 2019, a police computer link was used to access the personal information contained in the death threats against Baydar, and in February 2020, there was a police computer connection to the information used in the threats. against Janine Wissler, a left-wing member of the Hesse Parliament
Baydar said his reaction to the first death threat was one of disbelief. However, what alarmed her was that it was a text message with her private phone number.
“Where did they get my number from?” she asked.
Idil Baydar, a German comedian, says the police are linked to the death threats she received for calling extreme right-wing extremists.
(Courtesy of Idil Baydar)
The threats continued. The messages were sent from a platform that allows anonymity. Then came a death threat against her mother.
Although those responsible for the threats have not been identified, the newspaper’s investigation showed that they were linked to a police computer.
Hesse’s interior minister only found out about police computer links to death threats when the newspaper contacted the ministry regarding the story they planned to publish. The police never informed the interior minister.
State Interior Minister Peter Beuth said in a statement last week that at least 27 public figures have been threatened in 67 messages, most of them by email from the same address. Most of the messages were signed “NSU 2.0”.
The texts Baydar received were signed “SS Ostubaf,” a high-ranking Nazi, according to the Washington Post.
“It is outrageous that these threats may be linked to requests for data within police systems,” Beuth said in a statement.
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The newspaper exposure was the last incident where extremists in Germany infiltrated the government. An elite special forces unit disbanded last month after being accused of harboring a culture of right-wing extremism.
“We are witnessing a disturbing increase in right-wing extremism in recent years,” said Remko Leemhuis, Director of the Lawrence & Lee Ramer Institute of the American Jewish Committee for German-Jewish Relations in Berlin. “We are also witnessing that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is becoming increasingly radical, especially in the eastern parts of Germany, where the Party is led by openly right-wing extremists and racists.”
He noted the importance of addressing this and uprooting it, especially given Germany’s past.
Last month, two suspected neo-Nazis went to trial for the execution-style murder of Walter Lübcke, a politician in Chancellor Angel Merkel’s Christian Democrats party.
The Washington Post reported that an investigation into neo-Nazi threats has uncovered WhatsApp chat groups where officials had shared neo-Nazi content. Five officers were suspended and another left the force.
The Frankfurt attorney general declined to comment to Fox News.
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Baydar said that from his minority perspective in Germany, structures have only marginally changed since 1933.
“I think what really drives them crazy,” she said, “I am very good at making fundamental truths for the public.”
Despite death threats, she remains determined to continue calling the right-wing extremists.
“They want to see themselves as heroes who are taking the cockroach out of the country for the good of Germany,” he said. “I only have a chance to be a voice right now. I’m using the voice for all people who don’t have a voice. ”
