The European Championships in Munich are overshadowed by an anti-Semitic incident: a security guard is said to have shown the Hitler salute to a delegation from Israel on the Munich Olympic grounds on Tuesday evening. The 19-year-old security employee was arrested immediately, as the Munich police headquarters announced on Wednesday.
The 16-strong group of visitors from Israel, consisting of officials and athletes, wanted to visit the memorial sites of the 1972 Olympic assassination on the Olympic site. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the terrorist attack. The delegation was accompanied by several police officers and representatives of the organizer.
Police immediately arrested the suspect
According to the Munich police, one of the four employees of a security service showed the forbidden Nazi gesture when the delegation passed a bridge. A police officer observed the crime and arrested the 19-year-old. According to the current state of investigation, no member of the delegation had noticed the crime. According to the police, the 19-year-old comes from Berlin, has German nationality, but probably has Arabic roots. He has not yet appeared in the police force.
The Attorney General’s Office took over the case
The case is now with senior public prosecutor Andreas Franck, the anti-Semitism commissioner at the Munich public prosecutor’s office. The 19-year-old is accused of violating Article 86a. This article prohibits the use of marks of unconstitutional organizations. “But we are only at the beginning of the investigation,” said Franck in an interview with BR24.
The allegation of anti-Semitism in the presence of Israeli athletes and officials is taken very seriously, but the exact motive for the crime has yet to be determined, the prosecutor said. However, the constellation of time and place “pointed very much to an anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish background to the crime”. This is “not legally binding, but obvious and obvious.”
Employee loses accreditation and is screened
According to senior public prosecutor Franck, the suspect’s accreditation for the European Championships was withdrawn. It is also doubtful whether the 19-year-old will be allowed to continue working as security. Security service employees would always be subjected to a reliability check by the trade office. This is also being checked again with the suspect.
According to the current state of knowledge, there is nothing against the other three colleagues of the suspected security staff, who were also present. Nevertheless, the organizer of the European Championships immediately revoked the accreditation of all four men. They will no longer be used in the competitions running until Sunday.
Central Council of Jews: “Shocking”
The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, described the incident as “shocking”. The case shows that anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are still too widespread. “It is shameful that Israeli athletes had to experience this incident not far from the memorial.”
The Central Council repeatedly denounced anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate speech, emphasized Schuster. But many people would not want to believe that – the current case also makes this clear. “Obviously, the significance of the assassination attempt on Israeli athletes 50 years later is still not present in society,” said Schuster.
Spaenle: case “intolerable in a special way”
The Anti-Semitism Commissioner for the Free State of Bavaria, Ludwig Spaenle, said: “Above all, the location and the time make this incident particularly unbearable.” According to Spaenle, it is important that the investigative bodies take action now. Currently, a few days before the official commemoration of the 1972 Olympic attack in which eleven Israeli athletes and officials were murdered, there is a particular awareness of anti-Semitism and of the attack on this site, says Spaenle.
“We currently have a particularly charged situation.” It is exacerbated by the debate about the participation of the victims’ families in the official memorial event. After a dispute about adequate compensation for the bereaved, the families canceled their participation on September 5th. As the anti-Semitism commissioner, Spaenle also keeps getting anti-Jewish emails these days, which he forwards directly to the public prosecutor’s office.
The city of Munich also takes a stand
The state capital Munich also condemned the incident at the memorial of the assassination attempt of the 1972 Olympic Games “in the strongest possible terms”, explained Munich’s sports officer Florian Kraus BR24. “The European Championships should be a peaceful place for sporting competition,” he said, adding that sport is synonymous with fair play, tolerance and team spirit. “Anti-Semitic, right-wing extremist or violence-glorifying statements and activities have no place in the EC 2022 as in our urban society.” The fact that the security staff was being investigated and that the organizers immediately excluded him was “the appropriate reaction to his behavior”.