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According to information from SPIEGEL, this harsh judgment stems from a draft report of the parliamentary control commission, which will be discussed there on Wednesday in a secret meeting.
The document reads alarmingly from the start. Intensive investigations have shown that “in different security authorities” of the federal and state governments, despite security checks, “individual employees are active with right-wing extremist ideas, including those oriented towards violence.” Some of them would have connected virtually via chat groups, but some would also have met in gun exchanges or shooting training.
Even if there is no permanent network or a threatening shadow army in the military or police, according to the newspaper, there is a “worrying digital network” among the suspects.
Connections with the “wing” völkisch AfD
Therefore, both the Intelligence Service of the Federal Armed Forces (MAD) and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had to correct their initial judgment that the right-wing extremists discovered were only individual cases. According to the panel, more investigations by the secret services are urgently needed.
The summary of the report is grim. Many of the alleged far-right soldiers and police officers, so the conclusion, have “a pronounced affinity for weapons, have specialized knowledge from their professional experience with the Bundeswehr special forces, the police and other authorities.” In some cases they had tried to conspire “to know the status of the investigations against them by the security authorities or intelligence operations.”
According to the report, many of the suspects have connections with the far-right “Identitarian Movement”, the AfD’s völkisch “wing” and its youth organization JA, but also with right-wing fraternities and the “Reichsbürger” movement. “Anti-Semitic attitudes come to light in the people involved in many places,” he says in the newspaper.
According to the newspaper, the Bundeswehr secret service in particular acted too passively in investigating these incidents for a long time.
MAD “did not sufficiently fulfill its tasks in the fight against right-wing extremism,” according to the inspectors’ judgment. For example, MAD was only “reluctant” to transmit information about suspects to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The MAD had made headlines over and over again in the past two years due to scandals. For example, a high-ranking officer of the service, who ironically always reported to the control committee on the status of MAD investigations against right-wing extremist soldiers, passed secret documents to old comrades of the elite unit “Special Forces Command “(KSK) after a raid.
In another case, the MAD failed to transmit explosive information about a KSK soldier, where a large cache of weapons was later excavated, to colleagues in the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The many setbacks caused MAD President Christof Gramm to be replaced a few weeks ago as both the Defense Ministry and the Chancellery had lost confidence that he could implement the tough reforms needed in the MAD. Now attorney Martina Rosenberg is supposed to do this job.
At work, the control commission qualifies the reforms that have already started in the MAD as “correct and necessary milestones for professional guidance.” Cooperation between MAD and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution remains “badly in need of optimization,” especially when it comes to suspected cases of right-wing extremists among reservists.
Secret service controllers also wish the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) would play a more active role in fighting right-wing extremism. International martial arts events, as well as shooting training or the possible purchase of weapons abroad, should be recognized with “common force”.
Terrorist investigations against soldiers of the Bundeswehr
In November 2018, the control committee commissioned special investigator Arne Schlatmann to investigate right-wing extremist tendencies in the Bundeswehr and security authorities. The administrative attorney worked in the interior department for years. Now it must shed light on the protection deficits of the constitution, BND and MAD in the investigation of possible far-right networks in the authorities.
The starting point was the terrorist investigation against the extreme right-wing First Lieutenant Franco A., suspected of having planned an attack. The goals could have been the green politician Claudia Roth as well as Heiko Maas (SPD) or Anetta Kahane, the head of the Amadeu Antonio Anti-racist Foundation.
Part of the special investigation was the far-right preparation group “Nordkreuz” in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which was preparing for the collapse of the state order. Several police officers and reservists were active in the group, and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating two members on suspicion of terrorism since 2017.
The committee also examined the handling of the shadowy “Uniter” association, which has been allegedly a right-wing extremist case by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution since this summer. Its founder is a former KSK soldier who worked in chat groups under the pseudonym “Hannibal”.
More recently, the task of the special investigator was expanded again in the summer. It will also investigate how the authorities have dealt with lost weapons over the past ten years, and what the services know about whether they ended up in the hands of extremists.
There are “clear indications of careless and improper handling of the firearms and ammunition administration” in the Bundeswehr, writes the control committee. This “favored” that weapons and ammunition could go unnoticed.
With the watchdog’s report, a new discussion should begin on how the authorities can be better positioned to fight right-wing extremists within their own ranks.
In the Bundeswehr, the KSK, the elite unit, is the main target. In mid-December, troops are due to present Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer with a report on how far they have come with the reforms.
