Spy chief fights for job after riots gaffe
The head of Germany’s home intelligence agency is fighting to save his job after claiming that there was ‘‘no credible evidence’’ for far-Right attacks on migrants during riots.
Hans-Georg Maassen, president of the Office for Constitutional Protection, is under mounting pressure to resign after a rebuke from one of Angela Merkel’s closest allies.
The row was prompted by a tabloid newspaper interview in which Maassen dismissed a video of neo-Nazis apparently pursuing foreigners through Chemnitz as ‘‘targeted misinformation’’.
Anti-immigrant protests turned violent in the Saxony city after the fatal stabbing of a 35-year-old German man.
Days after Merkel condemned the ‘‘hunting down of people who appear to be from different backgrounds’’, Maassen questioned whether any such violence had taken place. The remark was interpreted in some quarters as a barely concealed attack on the chancellor. Yesterday a politician from Merkel’s inner circle hit back as the spy chief tried to argue that his words had been misinterpreted.
Armin Laschet, the first minister of the state of North RhineWestphalia, who has been nicknamed the chancellor’s oneman bodyguard by the German press, suggested that Maassen was failing to do his job properly.
‘‘Those in charge of protecting the constitution should be keeping its enemies under observation, not giving tabloid interviews,’’ he said.
Boris Pistorius, Laschet’s opposite number in Lower Saxony, went further, accusing Maassen of being biased towards the Right and of trying to influence public opinion on the riots.
It has emerged that Maassen offered advice to the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in at least four covert meetings. He is said to hold strong objections to Merkel’s liberal migration policies, which he blames for deteriorating security. There is as yet no indication that he will back down.
Horst Seehofer, the Right-wing interior minister, who could strip Maassen of his post, has so far stood by him and is thought to share many of his opinions.
Maassen handed Seehofer and Merkel a brief memo yesterday justifying his remarks.
Der Spiegel magazine reported that he now accepted the authenticity of the video and had admitted to leaving ‘‘too much room for misinterpretation’’.
The footage in question shows a black-clad man pursuing a darkskinned youth across a road in Chemnitz, forcing him into traffic.
After a week of unrest in Chemnitz, the increasingly emboldened neo-Nazi movement has moved in on two cities in neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt. The state authorities have opened 14 investigations into a march in Halle on Tuesday, where demonstrators gave one another the Hitler salute and chanted ‘‘Sieg Heil’’. Some apparently spat at police officers. –