Germany is concerned that its security agencies contain far-right sympathizers, a fact which has taken on new meaning after the Halle synagogue attack.
By World Israel News Staff
Far-right extremism has penetrated Germany’s security agencies, The Wall Street Journal reports in its weekend edition.
German authorities are worried that extreme-rightwing views are spreading among soldiers and police officers, sparking internal investigations to identify those in their ranks who may be sympathetic to the radical right, the paper reports.
“Officials fear that far-right extremism is seeping into the ranks of police and soldiers, as a number of their officers have been indicted or sentenced, and dozens of others are being investigated, for offenses ranging from links to extremist groups to plotting terrorist attacks in the period since the migration crisis of 2015,” the Journal says.
The investigations include cases involving online chat forums where racist views are aired to illegal weapons possession to a hit list of left-wing politicians
In the case of the online chat forums, police learned that a special forces-agent managed a number of chat channels on the instant messaging service Telegram. The chats included 500 members, among them senior police and army officials, a SWAT officer and doctors and lawyers, the Journal says.
The special-forces sergeant wrote in the chat in 2016 of the need for violent clashes against Muslim immigrants.
“Unless the conflict happens this year or the next, then in 10 years’ time we won’t be able to defend ourselves anymore,” he wrote. “When interrogated by police about his message, he said that mass migration would make Islam a state religion in European countries,” the paper reports.
Following Wednesday’s attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany by a neo-Nazi extremist, who killed two, the probes into the security forces have taken on heightened meeting.
Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said in a Thursday press conference, “The threat from anti-Semitism, right-wing extremism and right-wing terrorism is very high.” He said it now matches the threat from Islamic terror.
The Wall Street Journal says Europol, the European Union law-enforcement agency, found that right-wing extremists are “actively working to recruit soldiers and police officers” to learn military skills.