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Frankfurt dissolves elite police unit over far-right chats

The German state of Hesse on Thursday said it was dissolving Frankfurt's elite police force after several officers wereaccused of participating in far-right online chats and swapping neo-Nazi symbols.

Frankfurt dissolves elite police unit over far-right chats
Police in Frankfurt on May 19th. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Frank Rumpenhorst

The “unacceptable conduct” of some members of the SEK special deployment commando made the dissolution of the team “inevitable”, said Hesse state interior minister Peter Beuth.

An expert committee will oversee a complete restructuring of the unit, he
added.

It comes a day after prosecutors in the western city of Frankfurt said they
were investigating 20 police officers, including elite commandos, over
extremist material shared in chat groups.

Seventeen of the accused are suspected of distributing content which
incites racial hatred, or of sharing neo-Nazi images.

Three officers stand accused of obstruction of justice because, as
superiors, they allegedly failed to stop or sanction the chats.

READ ALSO: Germany opens fresh probe against police over neo-Nazi chats

The probe was launched in April, authorities said. Most of the offending
content was exchanged in 2016-17, with the most recent from 2019.

The accused are all male and range in age from 29 to 54. Nineteen are
active police officers and one retired.

The probe began with allegations against a 38-year-old SEK officer in
Frankfurt accused of sharing illicit content including child pornography.
A search of his mobile phone uncovered some of the racist chats in question.

The case is only the latest example of alleged extremism in the ranks of
the German police.

Last September, officers in the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia swooped on colleagues accused of spreading what prosecutors
called “repulsive” far-right propaganda in WhatsApp groups.

Last July, prosecutors announced the arrest of a former police officer and
his wife suspected of having sent threatening emails to politicians and other
public figures across Germany.

The anonymous messages were all signed “NSU 2.0”, a reference to a German neo-Nazi cell that committed a string of racist murders in the 2000s.

Also last year, Germany’s defence minister ordered the partial dissolution
of the elite KSK commando force over right-wing extremism.

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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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