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Photo: Patrick Seeger/ picture alliance/dpa
They are said to have spread racist messages via messenger services: the Koblenz public prosecutor's office is investigating more than 50 suspects on initial suspicion of potentially criminal posts in chat groups.
The investigating authority announced on Monday that four police officers, a former student at the Police University and two federal police officers were among the suspects.
Pictures with swastika symbols, anti-Semitic, racist and anti-disabled messages were sent in the chats.
It is mainly about hate speech and the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations.
"A final criminal classification is still pending," says the statement from the public prosecutor's office.
Search measures were carried out on several suspects at the end of August, it said.
Presumably criminal chat content was initially found on a private mobile phone of one of the suspects.
This got the investigation rolling.
From July 2018 to 2021, the more than 50 accused are said to have posted a "double-digit number" of pictures and stickers, often with text, in various messenger chat groups, which "clearly exceed the limits of good taste and at least some of them may be criminally relevant". , according to the prosecutor's statement.
In one case, it is also about the violation of personal rights when taking pictures by an accused police officer and a depiction of violence by another accused.
According to a report by the ARD political magazine "Report Mainz", the investigations into the police officers are about allegedly right-wing extremist and probably also sexist content on the cell phones of the officers.
According to "Report Mainz", the Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of the Interior Ebling (SPD) wants to inform the interior committee of the state parliament about the incidents.
ala/dpa
