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Memorial event for the two police officers who were shot in Kusel
Photo: Sebastian Gollnow / dpa
The deadly shots at two police officers near Kusel in Rhineland-Palatinate have led to numerous hate comments online.
In one case, the district court in Koblenz has now issued an arrest warrant against a 55-year-old man.
The accused is strongly suspected of having publicly called for the killing of police officers in videos, the investigators said on Wednesday.
The man is said to have called for a so-called cop-hunting on Facebook.
Accordingly, he offered to lure police officers into a forest for a “fee” of 500 euros, where “interested parties” could shoot them from high seats, for example.
According to the public prosecutor's office, he published a video and filmed, among other things, a piece of forest that he considered suitable.
He is also said to have said that "the party" could take place between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. and promised "prize money".
In total, after the police murder in Kusel, the authorities identified 399 cases of hate comments on the Internet, as the Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Minister Roger Lewentz said on Monday.
Around 100 of these cases are criminally relevant.
Arrest warrant for risk of flight
The Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism in Rhineland-Palatinate is now taking over the procedure.
There is an urgent suspicion that the man from the Birkenfeld district took the police murders as an opportunity for his Facebook videos, the Attorney General said.
An investigating judge from the Koblenz district court issued an arrest warrant against the 55-year-old, which was executed today, according to a statement from the Koblenz public prosecutor's office.
The reason given is "that the accused will try to evade prosecution by fleeing".
A 24-year-old police officer and a 29-year-old police commissioner were shot dead during a vehicle check near Kusel in the Palatinate on Monday last week.
On the same day, two suspects were arrested in neighboring Saarland.
Investigators assume that the 38 and 32-year-old men committed the act together to cover up poaching.
hpp/dpa
