The German National Criminal Investigation Department on Wednesday conducted searches of six members of a special unit (SEK) of the police in Frankfurt. They allegedly participated with 14 colleagues in chat conversations in which contributions with incendiary content or images of a former National Socialist organization were shared.
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Not only the homes of the six were searched, but also their workplaces at the police headquarters in Frankfurt. Data carriers were seized. Most of the contributions in the chat conversations date from 2016 and 2017, some from 2019. The suspects are part of a group of men between the ages of 29 and 54. Nineteen are still on active service with the SEK (Special operations command) but exempted from their duties, one has also been suspended.
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Among them are three superiors. They would not have distributed prohibited content themselves, but if executives did participate in the conversations and did not hinder them. The three are suspected of obstructing an investigation in office, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) in Frankfurt and the German National Criminal Investigation Service announced today. The latter not only investigates the criminal side of the case, but also examines whether a civil service investigation should also be opened against the public officials.
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child porn
The investigation against the group has been ongoing since April. The far-right chats via Messenger services came to light in an investigation against a 38-year-old colleague. He is suspected of possessing and distributing child pornography. Several chats were found in his mobile phone ‘with criminally relevant content’, a Public Prosecution Service spokesperson told de Süddeutsche Zeitung.
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According to the newspaper, several incidents involving far-right police officers have come to light in the state of Hesse since 2018. The most high-profile case was that of the chat group ‘Itiotentreff’ (idiot meeting) in a police station in the center of Frankfurt. Six police officers shared more than 100 mostly anti-Semitic, racist and Nazi glorifying images from October 2015 to early 2017. Forty of these are considered criminally relevant.
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North Rhine-Westphalia
The existence of groups of police officers with extreme right-wing chats in various Messenger groups also came to light in September last year in North Rhine-Westphalia, which borders on the Netherlands. State Secretary of the Interior Herbert Reul (CDU), ordered an extensive investigation. Months of investigation revealed that nearly 200 police officers were involved.
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One of the chat groups, which involved 15 police officers, is said to have not only exchanged messages but also posed for a swastika for a photo at a bowling alley, according to the German newspaper.
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Elite unit army
The elite unit KSK (Special Forces Command) of the German army has also been repeatedly discredited in recent years because of ‘far-right elements’ within its ranks. A 45-year-old suspect was arrested in May last year an arsenal of weapons and explosives found it. Of the twenty suspects, nine eventually remained whose suspicions, such as expressing Nazi sympathies and giving the Hitler salute, turned out to be well-founded. Three were banned from wearing uniforms, two were transferred and one who turned out to be the far right was fired.
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The corps was then thoroughly reorganized and one unit was even disbanded. That reorganization came last year, after an investigation by the German military intelligence service showed that the corps were members with an extreme right-wing ideology. The investigation followed a series of incidents in which commandos had been discredited, for example by giving the forbidden Nazi salute and other expressions of neo-Nazis. The reorganization was accompanied by the dissolution of one unit.
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Increase
The number of German soldiers suspected of right-wing extremism has risen sharply in recent years. The military intelligence service is investigating about 550 soldiers of the German army. In 2019 alone, 369 cases were added, Christof Gramm of the MAD (Military counterintelligence) announced early last year. Fourteen suspects were convicted of extremism, including eight right-wing extremists. Forty did not commit to adherence to the Constitution. The KSK elite corps has almost five times as many problem cases as the rest of the German army, the MAD chief said in an interview with World on Sunday.
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