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CRIME

Man found guilty of racial hatred jailed for running neo-Nazi website

A German court on Thursday sentenced a man to two and a half years in jail for running a banned neo-Nazi website, finding him guilty of inciting racial hatred.

Published: 8 February 2018 14:38 CET
Man found guilty of racial hatred jailed for running neo-Nazi website
One of the defendants at the beginning of the trial in Stuttgart. Photo: DPA

Judges in the western city of Stuttgart said the 29-year-old, identified only as Ralph K., who for several years ran the German-language “Altermedia Deutschland” site, “had led a criminal organization and propagated hate”.

Three co-defendants were convicted of contributing to the far-right platform and were handed suspended sentences between eight months and two years, national news agency DPA reported.

The German government shut down “Altermedia” on Holocaust Remembrance Day two years ago following a series of police raids.

Until then, “Altermedia” had been one of Germany's most popular online platforms for the far-right, attracting some five million visitors.

Prosecutors at the time said the site's content ranged from “incitement of violence against foreigners… to disparagement of people of other faiths and skin colours to Holocaust denial”.

It also included “banned Nazi greetings and slogans”, they said.

The website, hosted on servers in Russia, has been linked to US white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke.

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.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
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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