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Ronen Steinke, Berlin
When it comes to terrorism, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution often works hand in hand with the police. When a Tunisian made the poison ricin in a high-rise area in Cologne in 2018, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution monitored him for several months. When a Syrian manufactured explosives in his apartment in Chemnitz in 2016, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution also observed him and finally sent the police to arrest him. But the Office for the Protection of the Constitution must not become a kind of secret police alongside the actual police force: that is the central message of a judgment announced by the Federal Constitutional Court on April 26.