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CRIME

Neo-Nazi leader banned from German military association

Leader of the neo-Nazi NPD party Udo Voigt has been kicked off the DBwV German Military Association after being sentenced to incitement of hatred and slander in a racial discrimination trial last month, broadcaster RBB reported on Wednesday.

Neo-Nazi leader banned from German military association
Photo: DPA

The DBwV’s leadership decided unanimously to exclude Voigt from the organisation due to the April 24 verdict, Lieutenant Colonel Ulrich Kirsch told RBB.

Voigt, a captain in the Bundeswehr reserves, belonged to the association for some 30 years, but now faces disciplinary action in a military court. If he loses his military status in these proceedings, he also faces being barred from the military reserve association too, Kirsch said.

Voigt and two other NPD leaders were found guilty of offending German national footballer Patrick Owomoyela – who was born in Germany to a Nigerian father and a German mother – in a World Cup pamphlet printed in 2006. The cover of the planner showed a German football uniform with the caption, “White. Not just a jersey-colour! For a truly national team!”

Voigt received a seven month suspended sentence from the Berlin court, while the other two defendants, a 42-year-old and a 66-year-old, were sentenced to suspended sentences of seven and ten months respectively. All three NPD men must also pay fines of €2,000. By receiving suspended sentences the three will not serve any actual jail time.

The case was centred on the number on the shirt pictured, which the state prosecutors said was 25, Owomoyela’s jersey number in the 2006 World Cup squad.

A second version of the pamphlet showed a mocked-up picture of the German national team with only one white team member featuring a text suggesting that the team was becoming overrun by dark-skinned immigrants. The prosecutors said that the flyer tried to disqualify non-white Germans the right to play for the national team.

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CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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