The police have been searching for AfD politician Halemba for days. On Monday morning there was access in Baden-Württemberg. In the afternoon he goes to the Würzburg district court – and ultimately doesn’t go to prison.
“It wasn’t that easy to find him,” senior public prosecutor Thorsten Seebach admits frankly. It is Monday, day 5 after an arrest warrant was issued against the Bavarian AfD politician Daniel Halemba. At around 8 a.m., police officers caught the 22-year-old in hiding in Kirchheim unter Teck, Baden-Württemberg, around two hours’ drive from his home in Würzburg.
Using search measures such as cell phone tracking, the officers track down the student. The Würzburg public prosecutor’s office has been looking for him for days and has been investigating Halemba for weeks for incitement to hatred and using the symbols of anti-constitutional organizations.
“In the end you know where he is, and then of course he gets arrested,” says Seebach. It remains initially unclear who Halemba was staying with in Kirchheim, not far from Stuttgart.
Halemba is accused of this
The politician, who was born in Poland and grew up in the north of Baden-Württemberg, has been in the spotlight for weeks. The investigators want to see him in custody because of the risk of obscurity because there are fears that he could influence witnesses or destroy evidence. On Monday evening, however, the Würzburg district court finally decided: Halemba will not be taken into custody and the arrest warrant will be suspended under certain conditions.
Halemba now has to report to the police at his home in Würzburg once a week, Chief Public Prosecutor Seebach explains the decision. In addition, he is forbidden, among other things, from contacting members of the “Brschenschaft Teutonia Prag zu Würzburg” in order to prevent any possible influence on them. “We are watching Mr. Halemba closely,” announces Seebach.
Around three weeks earlier, Halemba became the youngest politician to be newly elected to the Bavarian state parliament. The 22-year-old leads the Würzburg AfD district association and ran in the Haßberge/Rhön-Grabfeld district in the state elections on October 8th. As one of four AfD politicians from Lower Franconia, he was actually supposed to be at the constituent meeting in the state parliament on Monday afternoon – and as the youngest, he was even supposed to sit right next to the senior president.
Will Halemba still be in custody?
However, this does not happen; instead, Halemba is brought before an investigating judge. However, the final word has not yet been spoken with the decision against pre-trial detention – according to Seebach, the public prosecutor’s office wants to examine a complaint. The Würzburg regional court would then have to deal with the matter.
According to his own information, Halemba has been a member of the “Brschenschaft Teutonia Prag zu Würzburg” since 2021, which was raided in September. According to the public prosecutor’s office, there was a suspicion that there could be objects with symbols of the National Socialist Party, NSDAP, as well as stickers and writings of a racist nature in the fraternity’s fraternity house.
Almost all of the seized items have now been evaluated, says Senior Public Prosecutor Seebach. “The allegations have been confirmed for us.” The evaluation of data carriers is still ongoing.
The public prosecutor’s office is also investigating four other members of the student association. The connection has not yet commented on the allegations when asked by the German Press Agency.
AfD politician rejects allegations
Halemba has so far rejected all allegations made against him as false. He sees the arrest warrant as repression by the state government against the AfD. “They wanted to imprison me, an elected member of the state parliament, three days before the constituent session with a completely arbitrary arrest warrant,” says the 22-year-old in a video published on the X platform (formerly Twitter).
The 22-year-old’s lawyer suspects a conspiracy and speaks of “legal humbug.” The arrest warrant “throws dirt around,” there are various allegations, “but that has nothing to do with Halemba,” says lawyer Dubravko Mandic to the dpa. In the evening he was satisfied with the district court’s decision. Halemba announces: “I will now concentrate on my work in the state parliament.” He wants to be at the Maximilianeum on Tuesday.
Members of parliament generally enjoy immunity. In a historically extraordinary step, the Bavarian state parliament lifted Halemba’s immunity in its constituent session on Monday. All parliamentary groups except the AfD voted in favor – without State Parliament President Ilse Aigner (CSU) mentioning his name in the public meeting. The AfD parliamentary group abstains. This makes it legally clear that the investigation against the 22-year-old can continue.
Aigner speaks of “conspiracy myths”
Aigner calls the arrest and especially the AfD reaction something “unprecedented” in her inaugural speech. “Neither Parliament nor I as President of the State Parliament can influence the decisions of the judiciary. That is one of the foundations of democracy,” she clarifies. The AfD’s reaction is therefore a “targeted attack on the institutions of our democracy.” They are “conspiracy myths”.
AfD parliamentary group leader Katrin Ebner-Steiner, on the other hand, complained: “With a fabricated reason for detention, the rights of the opposition are being significantly and flimsily encroached on.”
Whatever the legal outcome of the case, the scandal will overshadow the constituent meeting. There are already great concerns there because the new AfD faction is not only larger, but many of its members are also significantly more radical. In any case, many people have a reputation for moving the AfD faction further to the right. The Halemba case has finally brought these concerns to a head.