According to a statement from the public prosecutor’s office in Thuringia, charges are brought against Björn Höcke, the Thuringian faction leader of the AfD. It’s about Nazi vocabulary and the use of corresponding symbols.
Charges have been brought against Thuringia’s AfD faction leader Björn Höcke for using Nazi vocabulary. It’s about Höcke’s statements at an AfD campaign event two years ago in Merseburg in Saxony-Anhalt, as the public prosecutor’s office in Halle an der Saale announced on Monday. He was “sufficiently suspicious” of having used the banned slogan “Everything for Germany” in a public speech in front of an audience of around 250, which goes back to the National Socialist Sturmabteilung (SA).
The investigators are convinced that the suspect knew the origin and meaning of this expression. According to the information provided, Höcke denied the criminal relevance of his statement via his defense.
Björn Höcke was stripped of his immunity
The responsible public prosecutor’s office in Halle charges the AfD politician, who is also the state leader of his party in Thuringia, with using signs of unconstitutional organizations. The charges were brought before the Great Criminal Court of the Halle Regional Court. At the same time, the public prosecutor’s office emphasized that the assumption of sufficient suspicion does not mean a prior conviction.
In April, the judiciary committee in the Thuringian state parliament cleared the way for an indictment. Parliament lifted Höcke’s immunity as early as November 2021, thereby enabling public prosecutors to investigate. Before the next step, the indictment, the waiver of immunity was extended by the state parliament. The investigations are based on an advertisement by the then Green Party leader in Saxony-Anhalt, Sebastian Striegel.
The immunity of the Thuringian AfD right wing had already been lifted several times due to criminal investigations. The AfD politician temporarily lost his immunity in December 2020 after a complaint of hate speech was filed. In another case, Höcke’s special status as a member of parliament was temporarily revoked in December 2018 at the request of the Chemnitz public prosecutor’s office. So far there has been no trial against him.
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Since March 2021, the Thuringian state association around its chairman Höcke has been classified by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution as an object of observation in the field of right-wing extremism.
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Source: Stern
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