Right chat posts and questionable symbols in SEK rooms: Interior Minister Beuth has announced details of the police scandal in the state parliament. In his opinion, the investigation does not support the assumption of a right-wing collective.
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In the scandal over chats with right-wing extremist content at the Hessian police, Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) had to face questions from the opposition again on Thursday in the interior committee of the state parliament. In the meantime, around 19,000 chat contributions have been evaluated by the State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) – with the result that it was “mostly unpunished communication”, as Beuth emphasized.
It is currently assumed that there are 56 participants in seven chat groups – of which 50 officials are still active. Two chat participants have not yet been identified. In a group, not only right-wing extremists, but also two child pornographic content are said to have been shared. Criminal proceedings are currently ongoing against 19 police officers, and a good 20 disciplinary and labor law proceedings have been initiated, the ministry said.
“Culpable behavior is to be assessed individually”
“From the ongoing and ongoing investigations, the LKA gained the impression that the chats were not predominantly radical,” said Beuth. “The culpable behavior of the individual chat participants must therefore be assessed individually.”
For example, in a group chat that comprised around 10,000 posts, three posts were rated as relevant under criminal law. In another chat with around 9,000 posts, the public prosecutor’s office classified 24 posts as “potentially punishable by punishment”. A chat with around 130 posts revealed three possible crimes. The last time a criminally relevant content was posted in January 2019.
Even the officials who were members of the chat but did not post any posts relevant to criminal law or disciplinary law would be “viewed individually”, emphasized the minister. The integrity officer will also be involved.
Lamda symbols in SEC rooms
49 active officers took part in the recently announced chats with right-wing extremist content. Most of them were SEK forces from Frankfurt, the others came from the LKA, the riot police, the state police headquarters as well as from the praesidia of East and South Hesse and other units of the Frankfurt praesidium. Investigators came across these cases while evaluating the cell phone of a 38-year-old police officer who was originally suspected of child pornography and has since been suspended.
The public prosecutor’s office is investigating 19 active SEK forces and a former police officer. Among other things, they are said to have exchanged swastikas and images of Hitler. Beuth then dissolved the Frankfurt SEK and ordered the remaining forces to move to Wiesbaden-Mainz-Kastel. The move this week should support the new beginning, said the minister in the interior committee.
In the course of the investigation, experts from the State Security Department of the LKA and the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) scrutinized the premises of the SEK in the Frankfurt police headquarters. Beuth announced that there were “no criminal representations” and “no direct reference to right-wing extremism”.
Lambda symbols found there, which are also used by right-wing radicals, according to the LfV, “did not reveal any reference to the Identitarian Movement”. Lambda, the eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet, is the logo of the far-right movement.
Again criticism of Beuth’s communication
The opposition in the Hessian state parliament renewed its criticism of Beuth after the meeting. The interior minister is reluctant to “inform parliament and the public truthfully and transparently,” said the parliamentary manager of the SPD, Günter Rudolph. It was only after three inquiries that Beuth stated that the chat group, in which files relevant to criminal law were shared, were attended by 16 officials, none of whom intervened. Beuth is sticking to his “unfortunate salami tactic of only providing information in slices.”
In view of the new findings, the left spoke of a “bottomless pit”. “We have a number of other questions, expect consequences and consider Interior Minister Beuth to be the greatest possible misconduct and the top of the police problem in Hesse,” said Hermann Schaus, domestic policy spokesman for the parliamentary group.
The FDP, on the other hand, was relieved that the chat groups “were not set up specifically to exchange right-wing content there”. Even if this in no way diminishes the criticism of the exchange of right-wing content, emphasized the domestic political spokesman for the Liberals, Stefan Müller. The AfD, on the other hand, sees its view confirmed that the dissolution of the Frankfurt SEK was exaggerated by Beuth. “That was political activism with a mallet,” said AfD MP Klaus Herrmann.
Police chief regrets racist language image
The Wiesbaden Police President Stefan Müller, who was criticized for addressing SEK officials, has meanwhile shown himself to be self-critical in the Interior Committee. According to a report, Müller is supposed to Bild newspaper On June 15, around 30 officials commented on the dissolution of the Frankfurt SEK with the words “You don’t have to worry that the game of ten little negroes will start”. A participant in the meeting had made the incident public in a letter to the SPD parliamentary group.
Müller, who is tasked with rebuilding the SEK in Frankfurt, which was dissolved because of allegations of racism, was then confronted with the accusation that he himself had used a racist linguistic image. In the Interior Committee, he said that the sentence was “insensitive” and “inappropriate”. Immediately after saying it, he apologized.
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