Maassen apparently braked investigations to the right – a recent report reveals new details
Created: 2022-02-04 13:46
The former head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen in Suhl.
© Martin Schutt/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa/Archive image
A new report reveals that former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, is said to have thwarted employment with a right-wing institute.
According to a report, the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, has curbed his agency's involvement with the right-wing institute for state politics.
The Hamburg news magazine Spiegel
reported on Friday
that Maassen did not follow the
recommendation of the right-wing extremism department in his authority to take a close look at the organization of Götz Kubitschek and his magazine
Sezession .
According to the report, the then head of the authorities is said to have rejected the request because there were not enough employees for it.
Kubitschek is considered an advisor to AfD politicians and is said to maintain close contacts with the right-wing extremist "Identitarian Movement".
It was not until 2020 that the "Institute for State Politics" under Maassen's successor Thomas Haldenwang became a suspected case of right-wing extremism for the protection of the constitution.
Maassen apparently braked investigations to the right – a recent report reveals new details
According to the report, Maaßen also apparently slowed down an earlier referral at the time of the AfD *: At a meeting of the heads of department in 2016, the head of a state office is said to have asked why nothing was being done in the case of the AfD.
The statements of the Thuringian AfD boss Björn Höcke, for example, were enough for a test case.
Maassen replied that there was nothing, so nothing was being done.
Only after a meeting of five heads of state in early summer 2017 and after further urging did Maassen's federal office finally request a collection of material on the AfD for "open-ended examination".
But only after Maassen left office in January 2019 were parts of the AfD declared an object of observation.
Maassen ran unsuccessfully for a direct mandate in the Bundestag * in southern Thuringia last year.
The CDU is now discussing a party expulsion, but party leader Friedrich Merz sees little chance of this.
(AFP/aka) *Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
