According to reporters, threats were also made from among the AfD supporters. “The people here will already solve the problem,” one participant exclaimed. It is currently unclear whether there is a connection between these threats and the attack. At the request of MDR SACHSEN, AfD member of parliament and former candidate for district administration Frank Peschel denied any guilt. Karsten Hilse, member of the AfD Bundestag, also spoke at the AfD rally. After the rally, the demonstrators went to the Spreehotel, where they were also granted entry. Some participants are said to have insulted the district administrator.
District administrator and interior minister condemn alleged attack
District Administrator Udo Witschas condemned the alleged arson attack. “I’m absolutely horrified and angry,” said Witschas in a statement from the district office on Friday afternoon. At the time of the fire, employees of the house lived in the building. “Thus, human lives were carelessly endangered,” said Witschas.
Burning houses out of hatred because you don’t want refugees around is deeply primitive and inhuman.
Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU) was also shocked. “Burning houses out of hatred because you don’t want refugees near you is deeply primitive and inhuman,” Schuster said in a first statement. That is not the basic attitude of the Saxons, especially in the current situation. It is not yet known who threw the incendiary devices into the Spreehotel. “But we have to assume a xenophobic arson attack,” said the interior minister.
2016 arson attack on Spreehotel
That Spreehotel at the Bautzen reservoir was a refugee shelter before and the target of an arson attack in December 2016. At that time, several Molotov cocktails were thrown onto the site. Three young men had admitted the attack and were given suspended sentences.
Fire in planned asylum accommodation in Husarenhof
Also in the hotel “Husarenhof” in Bautzen A fire broke out in February 2016. The hotel burned shortly before it was to become a refugee home. During the extinguishing work, people shouted xenophobic slogans.
In November 2016, two men were sentenced to several years in prison for attacking firefighters while they were putting out the fire. To this day, the arsonists have not been identified. The process was discontinued in 2019.