In the area of politically motivated crime, the German Police has outstanding arrest warrants for a total of 1,814 people. However, most of these persons are not wanted for political offences.
The number of neo-Nazis wanted by warrant in Germany has hardly decreased in the past six months. In the autumn, 597 people from the right-wing spectrum were listed in police databases for arrest in the “politically motivated crime” (PMK) phenomenon area, compared to 619 in the spring, a spokesperson for the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) explained in response to an enquiry from “nd”. Around 20 per cent of these arrest warrants relate to politically motivated right-wing offences. Terrorism offences are not among them, according to the authority.
The BKA collects the figures on those suspected of having gone underground for political reasons every six months, after which they are queried by the Left Party in the Bundestag in the “right-wing” phenomenon area. However, the most recent minor enquiry in autumn came to nothing, as the state criminal investigation offices, the Federal Police and the Customs Criminal Investigation Office still had to agree on their counting methods, as stated by the BKA. Shortly afterwards, the Left Party lost its parliamentary group status and was only allowed to submit ten enquiries per month as a group. Because it appealed to the Constitutional Court, the Bundestag’s Council of Elders recommended the temporary lifting of this restriction last week.
As of the end of September, the BKA’s police information system (Inpol) counted a total of 1814 people with outstanding arrest warrants in the PMK area. The majority of the wanted persons were “in unknown locations or abroad”.
449 people are wanted in the category “PMK other categorisation”, including suspects from the also right-wing dominated “Reichsbürger/Selbstverwalter” or corona deniers spectrum. According to the authorities, a fifth of the offences accused in the arrest warrant were also politically motivated. One person in hiding is said to be wanted for a terrorism offence.
In the area of “PMK left-wing”, the police are currently searching for 94 people; according to the BKA, almost 30 per cent of the offences are politically motivated and eight arrest warrants contain a terrorism charge.
The BKA has by far the highest number of terrorism suspects, with 215 people alleged to have committed offences in the area of “religious ideology” (215) and “foreign ideology” (30).
In addition to outstanding arrest warrants, another 12,084 wanted persons were listed in the Inpol database for “discreet checks”, the BKA spokesperson told “nd”. These suspects are not supposed to be aware of these covert measures, but the police issuing the alert receive a notification of where and with whom the person was checked. However, the actual number of people who have been put out for undercover checks is lower, as there may be several wanted persons for one person.
A further 23,387 wanted notifications in the Inpol system relate to “targeted controls” on individuals. This involves searching the persons concerned and their luggage, and the police station concerned is notified of the results.
The BKA has also entered a total of 4,341 people in the Schengen Information System (SIS II) set up by the EU for “discreet checks” throughout Europe. A total of around 160,000 people are listed there for these secret monitoring activities by European police and intelligence services, and the number is increasing every year. This list is headed by a wide margin by authorities from France.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: Blockupy Frankfurt (Montecruz, CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed).
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