German government to hire 600 new officers to help monitor far-right activity

December 18, 2019 by Joseph Fitsanakis

The German government has announced plans to hire hundreds of new police and intelligence officers, in order to step up its monitoring of violent far-right groups in the country. The announcement came at a press conference hosted on Tuesday in Berlin by Horst Seehofer, Germany’s Interior Minister.

Seehofer told reporters that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution —BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence and counterterrorism agency— would hire 300 new officers whose job will be to focus on domestic far-right extremism. The German Federal Criminal Police Office will hire an additional 300 offers for the same purpose, added Seehofer. With these additional 600 officers, federal authorities will be able to increase their monitoring of far-right political groups, football fan clubs, far-right websites, and other hubs of far-right activity, said the minister.

German authorities estimate that there are 12,000 committed far-right extremists in the country who are willing and able to carry out violent attacks inside Germany or abroad. However, nearly 50 percent of actual attacks by adherents of far-right ideologies that have taken place in Germany in recent years have been carried out by individuals who were not on the radar of the police and intelligence services.

In addition to hiring 300 new intelligence officers, the BfV will set up a new “Central Office for Far Right Extremism in Public Service”, whose task will be to uncover adherents of far-right ideologies working in government agencies. The new office will concentrate its investigations on the police, the military and other government bodies.

During his press conference on Tuesday, Minister Seehofer stressed that the intensification of investigations into far-right terrorism would not happen at the expense of probing political violence from the far left and Islamist extremists.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 18 December 2019 | Permalink