Press
The AfD wanted to defend itself against surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Bavaria. Now there is a ruling.
Munich – The Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution is allowed to monitor the AfD as a suspected case of right-wing extremism. The Munich Administrative Court rejected a complaint by the Bavarian regional association against the monitoring as unfounded. At the beginning of the hearing, AfD regional chairman Stephan Protschka announced that he wanted to exhaust all legal channels.
The evidence is sufficient and so significant that the public can also be informed, said the chairman of the 30th Chamber at the Munich Administrative Court, Michael Kumetz. He justified this with statements directed against Muslims and other people with a migration background or with comparisons between current German courts and those from the Nazi era. “Observing only individual district associations would be too simplistic,” said Kumetz.
The Higher Administrative Court in Münster had already declared the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s observation of the AfD to be legal.
No success in two previous instances
In 2022, the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced that it would monitor the AfD using intelligence resources because there were indications of unconstitutional activities. The AfD initially filed an expedited appeal against this and lost in two instances. The main case was heard at the administrative court.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution presented the court with extensive evidence, including thousands of pages of chat logs. The material is said to show that the suspicion of right-wing extremist tendencies and thus surveillance is justified.
During the trial, the AfD side had always argued that the extremist statements listed were the excesses of individuals, which had always been sanctioned by the party – for example with exclusion procedures and bans from holding office – or which had been resolved for the AfD anyway by people leaving the party. dpa
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