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Lord Mayor Claus Kaminsky
Photo:
Andreas Arnold / dpa
A 25-year-old is suspected of having threatened Hanau's Lord Mayor Claus Kaminsky online for several days.
The police have now caught the man and a preliminary investigation has been initiated.
The public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main announced this in a message that SPIEGEL has received.
The alleged sender of the hate messages had threatened the use of physical violence against the politician via Facebook if he met him personally.
The suspect is said to have threatened both publicly and via private message.
Among other things, the mayor received the message: "If I see you once, I'll kick your face in."
Another message said: "If I get you, I will personally kick your face in the corner ..." When the alleged perpetrator's apartment in the Main-Kinzig district near Frankfurt was searched, his smartphone was found, the message said.
In February 2020, a 43-year-old right-wing extremist killed nine people in Hanau, and later he was found dead in his apartment, as was his 72-year-old mother.
In view of the discussion about xenophobia in Germany, Mayor Kaminsky emphasized at the time: "Those who were murdered in Hanau were not strangers. They were fellow citizens."
The task now is to encourage citizens to stand up for democracy and the rule of law.
"The days and hours in peacetime are the blackest and darkest our city has ever seen," said Kaminsky later at a memorial event.
He shouted to those who wanted to divide society: "We are more and we can prevent you from doing so."
It is unclear whether the threats against Kaminsky are related to the Hanau attack.
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