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Düsseldorf / Berlin (dpa) – Following the discovery of five chat groups with far-right content in the North Rhine-Westphalia police, State Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) admitted to underestimating the scope.
Incidents from the far right, for example between police officers in Hagen, Hamm or Gelsenkirchen, and the chat group that has now been exposed have shown: “We apparently have not recognized everything, perhaps even underestimated the dimensions,” Reul said in parliament. state in Düsseldorf.
According to Reul, 30 police officers have been temporarily released from their duties due to the chat groups. The suspension of an officer from the Mülheim police authority was added to the 29 already known cases. 14 officers will be removed from duty. A special representative appointed by Reul is supposed to create a picture of the situation of right-wing extremist tendencies in the police. Calls are being made nationally for action to combat right-wing extremism and the misunderstood spirit of the corps in the ranks of public officials.
“I didn’t think the dimension and these atrocities were possible,” Reul said. It is “the worst and most disgusting neo-Nazi upheaval.” Reul emphasized: “We will work on this, radically and down to the smallest detail.” During searches on Wednesday, 43 phones, 19 SIM cards, 21 USB sticks, 20 hard drives, 9 tablets and 9 PCs were seized, as well as a small amount of narcotics.
You must be wondering why chat groups, some of which have been around since 2012, didn’t attract attention earlier. One problem is that groups are closed channels of communication. In some police areas there is also an “attitude problem” and the fear of losing friends if the activities are not kept silent. The message, however, is: “Those who are silent are accomplices,” Reul emphasized.
The SPD and the Greens accused Reul of wearing “blinders” for too long when it came to right-wing extremism in the police. “It has been a long time since we were able to talk about individual cases,” said green politician Verena Schäffer. NRW police have known at least 21 suspected cases.
Green leader Robert Habeck called for action against “misunderstood corps spirit” among officials. A whole department is involved. Not everyone was actively involved, but for years no one had done anything about it, Habeck told the German news agency. He asked for an independent police officer. To record the scope of racist and far-right networks, periodic statistical investigations of the conference of interior ministers in the federal states are required.
CDU interior expert Armin Schuster sees no German-wide networks in the police force. He hasn’t talked about individual cases for years. But he also does not see structures throughout Germany, Schuster told the ARD “Morgenmagazin”. Politically, the issue of right-wing extremism has been discussed in the security authorities for two or three years. To this end, a central office for the protection of the constitution has been created.
According to lawyers, posting files of right-wing extremists on WhatsApp groups by police officers is not necessarily a crime. “Jurisprudence is not unanimous on the question whether a contribution in a closed WhatsApp group is a public statement,” said dpa attorney Christoph Arnold in Bonn. Disciplinary may seem different. “If they are civil servants who have an unconstitutional attitude, they do not belong to the police force. Mr. Reul is absolutely right.” But you have to look closely “if someone who hires something like that rejects the basic order of free democracy,” said the lawyer. “If someone has that attitude, they should have been noticed in some way and not just by a WhatsApp image.”
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200917-99-594267 / 11
