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A truck dumps several tons of AfD flyers collected into a hall of a waste disposal company (photo from November 2021)
Photo: Patrick Pleul / dpa
The satire and political initiative "Center for Political Beauty" (ZPS) had deceived the AfD with a forged flyer campaign - and thereby damaged it in the election campaign.
The party spoke of "considerable damage to democracy" and announced a complaint.
Now an apartment and a studio of the initiative have been searched by the Berlin police.
According to the police, there is suspicion of falsifying evidence-relevant data (Section 269 of the Criminal Code).
The officers confiscated several data carriers such as smartphones and computers.
Emergency services from the State Security Service of the Berlin State Criminal Police Office (LKA), which is responsible for politically motivated acts, were also on duty.
Section 269 of the Criminal Code deals with "deception in legal traffic" and the alteration of data.
With its flyer campaign, the center had duped the AfD in the 2021 election campaign.
The activists had deceived party members and in the autumn collected millions of information leaflets from various district associations of the party in order to allegedly distribute them.
»The party gratefully accepted the offer and delivered over five million flyers and 72 tons of advertising material to the ZPS logistics chain.
Mind you, without an order confirmation or a legally valid contract, «wrote the collective in the message at the time.
The flyers were later destroyed.
With the action, the center invokes artistic freedom.
The AfD had spoken of more than a million campaign flyers that had not been distributed.
The center named the number of around five million flyers or around 30 tons of advertising material that had been shredded at a document shredding company.
»Black Day for Artistic Freedom«
The "Center for Political Beauty" complained about the searches on Twitter.
With a view to the state government made up of the SPD, the Greens and the Left, they wrote: »The first official act of the new R2G Senate in Berlin: Search the apartments of artists.
A black day for artistic freedom in Germany. "
mrc / dpa
