Germany’s domestic intelligence agency will put a group within the AfD opposition party under surveillance as an extremist organisation amid rising concern about growing far-right violence in the country.
The measure caps a 12-month investigation and means the agency can start covertly monitoring members of Der Flugel, or The Wing, a network within the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The surveillance could include tapping phones, monitoring electronic communications, and inserting undercover agents into the network.
“This is a warning to all enemies of democracy,” said Thomas Haldenwang, head of the intelligence agency on Thursday.
The decision is a setback for the AfD, the federal parliament’s largest opposition party, which had long criticised the probe. While nationalists have gradually increased their influence in the party over more moderate voices, the AfD still paints itself as a robustly conservative yet reputable alternative to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union.
Some AfD leaders have stirred controversy with comments that appeared to play down Nazi-era crimes. At the same time, concern about far-right extremism has risen following a string of politically motivated attacks that have claimed 13 lives in less than a year.
The party said it would challenge the agency’s decision to court. “The #VS is using the basest methods to criminalise the biggest opposition party,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel wrote in a tweet, using an acronym for the intelligence agency. “We will use all legal instruments to put an end to this surveillance.”
Read the article by Bojan Pancevski in The Australian (from The Wall Street Journal).