justice
Use of Nazi vocabulary: proceedings against Höcke
Björn Höcke has to go to court. photo
© Sebastian Willnow/dpa
He is said to have used Nazi vocabulary at an AfD election campaign event. The Halle regional court has now opened proceedings against Höcke. And these are not the first investigations against him.
Thuringia’s AfD chairman Björn Höcke has to answer in court because of the accusation of using the symbols of unconstitutional organizations. A court spokesman said the Halle regional court had approved the prosecution.
Höcke is said to have used a banned slogan of the Storm Department (SA) of the NSDAP in a speech in Merseburg in Saxony-Anhalt at the end of May 2021. Höcke is said to have known that the last part of the formula “Everything for our homeland, everything for Saxony-Anhalt, everything for Germany” was a forbidden slogan, according to the accusation.
The chamber of the regional court followed the opinion and admitted the prosecution to the main hearing. The proceedings will be opened before the Merseburg district court, according to the court spokesman.
The public prosecutor’s office brought charges against Höcke in May of this year. In an admission to this accusation, Höcke “denied the criminal relevance of his statement,” prosecutors said at the time.
More charges
Only at the beginning of this month did the Justice Committee of the Thuringian State Parliament clear the way for further charges against Höcke by the Mühlhausen (Thuringia) public prosecutor’s office, according to information from the German Press Agency from committee circles. Apart from the three AfD MPs, all parliamentarians present agreed to the renewed lifting of Höcke’s immunity.
The AfD politician himself said on the X platform (formerly Twitter) that his immunity had been lifted for the seventh time. He wrote of a “judicial club against dissidents.” The Mühlhausen public prosecutor’s office accuses Höcke of being guilty of incitement through a post on the social network Telegram.