After the arrest warrant against AfD politician Daniel Halemba was suspended, the Würzburg public prosecutor’s office has not yet decided whether it will lodge a complaint. Chief Public Prosecutor Thorsten Seebach said this on Tuesday. “We’ll probably take a few days to do this.”
If she decides to do so, the Würzburg district court would have to deal with the matter again and check whether the 22-year-old should be taken into custody. If the court sticks to its decision from Monday, the case would be examined by the Würzburg district court, as a district court spokesman explained.
The public prosecutor’s office is investigating Halemba for sedition and using the symbols of anti-constitutional organizations. The student, who most recently lived in Würzburg, rejects the allegations. He was arrested on Monday in the Stuttgart area after a day-long search with an arrest warrant. However, he was not taken into custody. Rather, the district court suspended the arrest warrant, among other things, against reporting requirements and a ban on contact with other suspects in the matter. In the court’s opinion, the risk of escape and obscurity could be adequately countered through conditions, a district court spokesman said on Tuesday.
Halemba is the youngest member of the newly elected state parliament in Munich. He was absent from the constitutive session of the state parliament on Monday because of the presentation at the district court. On his first day there on Tuesday, he again spoke of an arbitrary arrest warrant against him. The AfD even saw a fabricated reason for detention and suspected state repression. State Parliament President Ilse Aigner (CSU) said on Monday that, contrary to what the AfD claimed, neither parliament nor she herself could influence the decisions of the judiciary.
The public prosecutor’s office is also investigating four other suspects – including members of the “Brschenschaft Teutonia Prag zu Würzburg”, to which Halemba also belongs. During a raid in September, a guest book was confiscated from the fraternity house, in which an entry with the statement “Sieg Heil” was signed with Halemba’s name. In the room occupied by the 22-year-old, a printout of an SS order from SS chief Heinrich Himmler from October 1939 with a so-called double sigrune was discovered. In other rooms of the fraternity house, the investigators said they found various Nazi devotional items and anti-Semitic writings.
“The evaluation of numerous seized data carriers and cell phones is currently ongoing,” said the public prosecutor’s office. In addition, brass knuckles, a machete, batons, a one-hand knife and a blank gun were also found in the fraternity house. On Tuesday, the Bavarian Constitutional Court announced that the AfD parliamentary group and Halemba had failed with their applications there. The requests for interim orders are inadmissible. The aim of the applicants was to enable Halemba to take part in the constituent session of the state parliament. At a similar time, the student was brought before an investigating judge at the Würzburg district court on the basis of the arrest warrant.