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POLICE

German police probed for forming far-right group, death threats

German police have been shaken by accusations five officers formed a far-right cell that shared Hitler and swastika pictures in a WhatsApp group and threatened a lawyer with Turkish roots.

German police probed for forming far-right group, death threats
The badge for the police in Hesse, where Frankfurt is the capital. Photo: DPA

The four male and one female officers in Frankfurt have been suspended from their duties during an ongoing investigation.

The group was discovered after allegedly threatening to “slaughter” the lawyer's two-year-old daughter in an anonymous fax message, reported the Frankfurter Neue Presse daily.

The message called the lawyer, Seda Basay-Yildiz, who has represented suspected Islamist militants, a “lousy Turkish swine” and told her to “piss off while you still get out of here alive”.

The message, which she received in early August, was signed “NSU 2.0” – a  reference to neo-Nazi terror cell the NSU, or National Socialist Underground, that murdered eight Turkish immigrants.

SEE ALSO: Four years of Germany's worst Neo-Nazi scandel

Basay-Yildiz, who has also represented families of NSU victims, said she routinely receives threats but was baffled that this one contained the name of her daughter and her private address.

She reported the fax to police, sparking an investigation which indicated  that officers had accessed her personal data on a Frankfurt station computer, reported the daily.

The probe sparked raids on the officers' homes and the confiscation of computer hard-drives and cellphones, which reportedly led to the discovery of the WhatsApp group.

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POLICE

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

A Danish court on Thursday gave a two-month suspended prison sentence to a 31-year-old Swede for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen's airport this summer.

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

In late July, Pontus Wiklund, a handball coach who was accompanying his team to an international competition, said when asked by an airport agent that
a bag of balls he was checking in contained a bomb.

“We think you must have realised that it is more than likely that if you say the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your bag, it will be perceived as a threat,” the judge told Wiklund, according to broadcaster TV2, which was present at the hearing.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated, and the coach arrested. He later apologised on his club’s website.

“I completely lost my judgement for a short time and made a joke about something you really shouldn’t joke about, especially in that place,” he said in a statement.

According to the public prosecutor, the fact that Wiklund was joking, as his lawyer noted, did not constitute a mitigating circumstance.

“This is not something we regard with humour in the Danish legal system,” prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen told the court.

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