faq
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is said to have requested data on Hans-Georg Maaßen from the BKA as part of an inquiry. This is reported by the “Bild” newspaper. What is behind it – and what is a knowledge query?
What happened?
According to a report in the “Bild” newspaper, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution approached the Federal Criminal Police Office with a query about Hans-Georg Maassen. According to the report, the reason was that Maaßen had appeared on the radar of the BKA investigators. They are said to have overheard a phone call: Maaßen had been called by a person who is said to be the focus of investigators in the investigation by the federal prosecutor against the alleged conspiracy group surrounding Prince Reuss. The group was raised in December because they are said to have planned a coup.
The authorities involved do not comment because it is an ongoing investigation and personal data is involved. The Federal Ministry of the Interior therefore does not provide any information either.
What is a cognition query?
In a search for information, one security authority asks another about what information is available on a specific person or situation. This is not unusual in investigative proceedings. As a rule, it is a matter of seeing in this way whether knowledge gained by another authority complements one’s own knowledge. Such an exchange of information between the authorities is, first of all, completely normal.
What does Hans-Georg Maassen say?
Maaßen is quoted in the “Bild” report as saying that he knew about himself from the query to the BKA – from wherever. At the same time, after the publication, he spoke to the Twitter successor X and sharply criticized the monitoring of the phone call, as well as the knowledge query by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: The person who is the focus of the BKA is being used as a witness in the investigation and called him in his capacity as a lawyer. Tapping the phone call is therefore illegal. In the newspaper report, he announced that he wanted to inquire at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution whether data about him was stored there. He has that option. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution has to provide him with information, but not what exactly is stored.
How is he defense of Constitution to measure?
The relationship between Hans-Georg Maassen and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, of which he was President from 2012 to 2018, has broken down. Maassen is considered persona non grata and is not invited to Federal Office events. Acting President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, said in January that Maassen’s statements were “very radical” and “only known from the extreme right-wing fringe of political endeavors” and that they were sometimes clearly anti-Semitic. The CDU had launched a party exclusion procedure against Maassen, but had failed.