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CRIME

Ex-NPD treasurer jailed for stealing neo-Nazi party funds

The former treasurer of Germany’s far-right NPD party on Friday was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail for embezzling more than €700,000 ($976,339) in party funds.

Published: 12 September 2008 17:09 CEST
Ex-NPD treasurer jailed for stealing neo-Nazi party funds
Kemna in the courtroom on Friday. Photo: DPA

A state court in Münster found Erwin Kemna had redirected the money from NPD accounts into his struggling kitchen studio company starting in early 2004 through the summer of 2007.

“I considered the finances of my firm and those of the party as one and the same,” Kemna said in his confession at the start of the trial.

The 57-year-old attempted to save his company from going under with the money from the NPD’s party coffers. The right-wing extremist, who has been a member of the neo-Nazi party since 1974, has already been in custody for seven months. He was guaranteed a sentence under three years for cooperating with the prosecution.

NPD Secretary General Peter Marx said he hoped the party would now be able to recoup some of the funds. The German government once tried to ban the party as unconstitutional, but failed due to technicalities. The NPD still receives government funding available to all major political parties.

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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