Right-wing extremism
Searches after attack on SPD members and police
Updated on December 27, 2024Reading time: 2 min.
After right-wing extremists attacked SPD members in Berlin in mid-December, emergency services searched houses and apartments across the country. The authorities are also investigating other suspects.
In connection with the attack by right-wing extremists on SPD members and police officers in Berlin, the investigative authorities in several federal states searched the suspects’ houses and apartments. Around 110 emergency services from the states of Berlin, Lower Saxony, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt executed search warrants at ten residential addresses, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office said.
There were missions in Wolfsburg (Lower Saxony), Aschersleben, Halle an der Saale, Schkopau and Leuna (all Saxony-Anhalt) as well as in Rötha (Saxony). Cell phones, digital storage media, suspected clothing, masking equipment, dangerous objects such as striking tools and knives as well as right-wing propaganda material were found and confiscated, it said.
Eight suspects are now being investigated. The investigations against four young men aged 16, 18 and two 19 years old were already known, three of whom remain in custody. Three other suspects aged 15, 19 and 21 as well as a 16-year-old are now suspected of being involved in the attack.
During the attack on December 14th at an SPD information stand at Berlin’s Lichterfelde-Ost S-Bahn station in Steglitz-Zehlendorf, two party members were initially insulted as “left-wing ticks”. The attackers are then said to have knocked the SPD members to the ground and then continued to beat one of them and kick them with combat boots.
Police officers who intervened were also attacked. One was injured in the face with a piece of glass, and another police officer broke his hand in the altercation. The police officers and one of the SPD members were taken to the hospital injured, but were able to leave after outpatient treatment. That day, dozens of right-wing extremists walked through Friedrichshain at a demonstration.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the accused are suspected of being members of the politically right-wing youth organization “German Youth First”. The group’s aim is, among other things, to take part in right-wing meetings in order to take violent action against political opponents.