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Police headquarters in Frankfurt am Main (archive image)
Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa
In Hesse, investigations are underway against 20 police officers for participating in right-wing extremist chat groups.
The officials, including special forces, are said to have disseminated inflammatory content, as the Hessian State Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden and the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor announced on Wednesday.
In the morning, the emergency services searched the homes of six suspects and their workplaces in the Frankfurt am Main police headquarters.
The accused are said to be a former police officer and 19 active officers who were banned from conducting official business.
One of them should be suspended, it said.
The chat content should also be checked for relevance under service law.
The investigators accuse 17 of the 20 accused of actively disseminating incitatory content as participants in chat groups.
Investigations were started against the other three accused because they were participants in the chat groups and, as superiors, did not prevent communication and punished them.
The starting point of the proceedings were investigations against a 38-year-old officer of a special task force of the Frankfurt police headquarters because of the possession and distribution of child pornography.
When evaluating his smartphone, the investigators discovered several chats in which they were able to identify content that was partly criminally relevant and numerous other participants in the chat groups.
wit / AFP
