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Police officers from North Rhine-Westphalia (symbolic picture): 30 officers are under suspicion
Photo: Federico Gambarini / dpa
In the scandal about right-wing extremist chat groups of the North Rhine-Westphalian police, some suspects are said to have admitted the postings, according to SPIEGEL information.
This was reported from authorities.
According to this, several police officers are said to have confessed to their own misconduct and stated that the content of the chat does not correspond to their political convictions.
All are said to have shown themselves to be cooperative with the investigators.
30 police officers are suspected of having sent and received right-wing extremist propaganda in private chat groups for years.
Almost all of them were or are members of a service group in Mülheim an der Ruhr.
The guard there belongs to the Essen Police Headquarters.
The accused's homes and offices were searched on Wednesday.
According to SPIEGEL information, the emergency services are said to have requested psychosocial support in several cases.
Some of the accused and their relatives are said to have not cope with the situation surrounding the search and to have suffered a breakdown, so so-called PSU teams are said to have been called in.
The teams look after police officers in particularly stressful situations, often after traffic accidents or the use of firearms.
All the accused police officers were provisionally removed from duty on Wednesday.
The chats, through which the officials are said to have sent photos of swastikas and Adolf Hitler, probably existed since at least 2012. The fact that no one in the service group apparently denounced this was "the real problem," said North Rhine-Westphalia's Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) in the SPIEGEL interview.
Read the full interview here: "I am concerned that there is more"
"But I hope that there was a silent majority," said Reul.
"Policemen who thought they were not allowed to say anything out of a misunderstood comradeship. These people now have to hear the gong. Whoever is silent is complicit."
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