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The district court in Cologne
Photo: Christoph Hardt / imago images / Future Image
A Cologne police officer has been sentenced to three months probation and a fine of 3,000 euros for publicly calling for criminal offenses and sedition.
As the Cologne District Court ruled, the 55-year-old had called for "violence and arbitrary measures" against migrants on the Internet.
A fine is not sufficient for "general preventive reasons".
The prosecution had accused the 55-year-old of having scorned North Africans with the term "Nafri" on a publicly accessible Facebook page in September 2019.
He also wrote that there are too many criminal North Africans in Cologne, as reported by the "Bild" newspaper.
The text was formulated with extremely aggressive vocabulary.
In the past few months there had been nationwide discussions about right-wing views within the police.
Only recently it became known that several police officers from North Rhine-Westphalia who are said to have participated in right-wing extremist chat groups apparently listened to right-wing music in their free time.
Disciplinary proceedings are underway against the police officer who has now been sentenced, as a spokesman for SPIEGEL confirmed.
The man has not yet been suspended from duty.
The officer had admitted the Facebook entry.
The background was that he had read something about a robbery allegedly by North African perpetrators on a homosexual couple.
The term "Nafri" is from the internal police use and describes there "North African intensive offender", he said.
As an excuse, he offered that he was sick at the time and had a lot of time for Facebook posts.
The public prosecutor argued that the defendant's statement was by no means an isolated case.
According to the prosecutor, the sentence was embedded in other posts with legal content.
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svs / dpa
