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TRAGEDY IN WINNENDEN

CRIME

Police probe gunman’s internet threat

German police said late on Thursday they were probing whether a supposed internet threat from the teenager who went on a deadly rampage at his old school this week might be fake.

Published: 13 March 2009 07:49 CET
Police probe gunman's internet threat
Photo: DPA

The spokesman for Waiblingen police said they found no trace of the message announcing the 17-year-old’s intentions to carry out Wednesday’s massacre on his computer. The discussion forum involved has also said that the message never existed.

Heribert Rech, interior minister of Baden-Württemberg, read the internet message aloud at a press conference earlier on Thursday.

“Shit, I’ve had enough, I am sick of this crappy life,” Tim Kretschmer allegedly wrote in a chat room only hours before he went to his old school and shot dead nine students and three teachers. “I might get out alive, but you will certainly hear about me tomorrow. Remember the name Winnenden.”

The remarks, said to be part of a conversation with another 17-year-old from Bavaria who told his father about it after the shooting, were made at 2:45 am, said Rech.

Less than seven hours later, at around 9:30 am, Kretschmer entered the school in Winnenden near Stuttgart, armed with a handgun taken from his father’s bedroom and more than 200 rounds of ammunition.

He eventually shot dead 15 people and died himself after a manhunt ended in a shootout. State police chief Erwin Hetger said he had turned the gun on himself.

German authorities are now working with the US internet company that hosts the online forum’s servers to find out whether Kretschmer made the threat beforehand or not.

CRIME

German far-right politician fined €13,000 for using Nazi slogan

A German court has convicted one of the country's most controversial far-right politicians, Björn Höcke, of deliberately using a banned Nazi slogan at a rally.

Published: 15 May 2024 08:43 CEST
German far-right politician fined €13,000 for using Nazi slogan

The court fined Höcke, 52, of the far-right AfD party, €13,000 for using the phrase “Alles fuer Deutschland” (“Everything for Germany”) during a 2021 campaign rally.

Once a motto of the so-called Sturmabteilung paramilitary group that played a key role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, the phrase is illegal in modern-day Germany, along with the Nazi salute and other slogans and symbols from that era.

The former high school history teacher claimed not to have been aware that the phrase had been used by the Nazis, telling the court he was “completely not guilty”.

Höcke said he thought the phrase was an “everyday saying”.

But prosecutors argued that Höcke used the phrase in full knowledge of its “origin and meaning”.

They had sought a six-month suspended sentence plus two years’ probation, and a payment of €10,000 to a charitable organisation.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, after the trial, Höcke said the “ability to dissent is in jeopardy”.

“If this verdict stands, free speech will be dead in Germany,” he added.

Höcke, the leader of the AfD in Thuringia, is gunning to become Germany’s first far-right state premier when the state holds regional elections in September.

With the court ordering only a fine rather than a jail term, the verdict is not thought to threaten his candidacy at the elections.

‘AfD scandals’

The trial is one of several controversies the AfD is battling ahead of European Parliament elections in June and regional elections in the autumn in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony.

Founded in 2013, the anti-Islam and anti-immigration AfD saw a surge in popularity last year – its 10th anniversary – seizing on concerns over rising migration, high inflation and a stumbling economy.

But its support has wavered since the start of 2024, as it contends with scandals including allegations that senior party members were paid to spread pro-Russian views on a Moscow-financed news website.

Considered an extremist by German intelligence services, Höcke is one of the AfD’s most controversial personalities.

He has called Berlin’s Holocaust monument a “memorial of shame” and urged a “180-degree shift” in the country’s culture of remembrance.

Höcke was convicted of using the banned slogan at an election rally in Merseburg in the state of Saxony-Anhalt in the run-up to Germany’s 2021 federal election.

READ ALSO: How worried should Germany be about the far-right AfD after mass deportation scandal?

He had also been due to stand trial on a second charge of shouting “Everything for…” and inciting the audience to reply “Germany” at an AfD meeting in Thuringia in December.

However, the court decided to separate the proceedings for the second charge, announced earlier this month, because the defence had not had enough time to prepare.

Prosecutor Benedikt Bernzen on Friday underlined the reach of Höcke’s statement, saying that a video of it had been clicked on 21,000 times on the Facebook page of AfD Sachsen-Anhalt alone.

Höcke’s defence lawyer Philip Müller argued the rally was an “insignificant campaign event” and that the offending statement was only brought to the public’s notice by the trial.

Germany’s domestic security agency has labelled the AfD in Thuringia a “confirmed” extremist organisation, along with the party’s regional branches in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.

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