Germany to investigate own police and military in crackdown on far-Right

Germany is to investigate its own civil service, police and military for far-Right links.

The move is part of a wider crackdown against following a series of incidents, including the assassination of a politician and a failed terror attack on a synagogue by lone far-Right gunmen.

“Germany has to become more active against the far-Right,” Horst Seehofer, the interior minister, said at a press conference to introduce the measures on Tuesday.

The far-Right is responsible for more than half of politically motivated crimes in Germany, he said.

Under the new plans, 600 new positions are to be created at the police and domestic intelligence service to focus exclusively on combating the far-Right.

A special “central office for far-Right extremists in public service” will be set up by the BfV domestic intelligence service to uncover cases in the police, military and civil service.

The move comes after it emerged earlier this month that a sergeant in the German army's special forces has been suspended from duty on suspicion of far-Right activism.

Two staff officers are reportedly under investigation for showing the Hitler salute at a private ceremony involving the suspended sergeant. None of the soldiers involved have been named.

There have also been a number of cases in the German police. Almost 40 police officers have been questioned in the state of Hesse alone. In Frankfurt, one officer has been arrested and several others questioned over a neo-Nazi threatening letter to a prominent laywer.

The wider government crackdown follows two particularly shocking incidents this year.

A bloodbath was narrowly avoided in the east German city of Halle in October when a lone far-Right gunman failed to force his way into a synagogue packed with worshippers celebrating Yom Kippur.

The gunman, Stephan Balliet, killed two passers by in frustration. He published a “manifesto” ahead of the attack in which he detailed his support for far-Right ideology.

In the other incident, Walter Lübcke, a local politician from Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party (CDU), was shot dead outside his home in June.

Stephan Ernst, a known far-Right sympathiser arrested on suspicion of killing Lübcke initially admitted responsibility but later retracted his confession

In his initial confession he told police he was motivated by Lübcke’s public support for asylum-seekers.

“For a long time now the far-Right has been responsible for half of politically motivated crimes. There is also an increase in serious crime and a significant increase in hate speech on the Internet,” Holger Munch, the head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police told Tuesday's press conference,

“We even see intimidating measures such as the publication of threatening lists in order to hound volunteers and local politicians out of office, posing a threat to democracy.”