Climate Desperation: German E-trucks Exempted from Tolls

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by Thomas Kolbe 

Last November, the German government extended the exemption of electric trucks from tolls — a multibillion-euro, indirect subsidy for a nearly nonexistent market segment and an additional burden on German taxpayers. In the transport sector, the same pattern repeats itself as with private cars: politics is trying to impose ideology over market forces.

The climate-driven transformation of Germany’s economy unfolds in countless incremental steps, through administrative acts and executive directives, largely under the public radar. Last November, the Bundestag passed the so-called Fourth Act to Amend Toll Regulations, which extends the toll exemption for zero-emission trucks for another six years.

The EU Parliament grants the national legislator this extension under the Eurovignette Directive — with the stated aim, in political jargon, of scaling up toward an emissions-free transport sector. In reality, the share of electric trucks in Germany’s transport fleet remains under 0.4 percent, roughly 3,000 vehicles out of some 850,000 registered trucks.

The political calculation is clear: competitive conditions for conventionally powered trucks will gradually worsen, while incentives to switch to a growing E-truck fleet will increase. This strategy falls under the concept of emissions-free restructuring of the transport sector, initially ignoring technical limitations, range issues, and charging challenges.

The toll exemption for battery-electric trucks also implies fiscal losses — gaps that taxpayers ultimately have to cover in other ways. Toll revenues generated roughly €7 billion last year — costs fully passed on to consumers. A simple example illustrates the scale: a 40-ton E-truck saves €30,000 to €45,000 annually due to the toll exemption, based on a rate of €0.35 per kilometer and an assumed annual mileage of 100,000 km.

In relative terms, this sharply raises the purchase cost of conventional trucks, incentivizing a gradual switch to electric models. Indirectly, these figures give an idea of what electrifying Germany’s 850,000-truck transport fleet could cost. Astronomical, grotesque — and just as with the heating law, it seems likely that reality will quietly force this economic madness to disappear into the vault of ideological grandiosity.

The transformation strategy is further reinforced through additional subsidies. To date, the federal government has offered bonuses of up to €160,000 per E-truck, or 80 percent of the extra cost compared to diesel trucks. Whether these incentives will continue given tight budgets remains uncertain. Meanwhile, E-truck operators enjoy electricity tax reductions, while operators of conventional vehicles are additionally burdened with CO2 certificate costs.

Everything is being done to force a structural shift toward zero-emission fleets. Taxpayers are harnessed to the ideological cart, and the entire existing subsidy framework is leveraged. Here, we see a blueprint of political control in the spirit of the Green Deal: adjustments to subsidy programs follow the system’s logic — more funds, more incentives, more regulation — regardless of the economic collateral damage already caused.

Germany’s conventional transport sector is increasingly squeezed by Brussels’ climate regulation. Starting this year, large diesel trucks face an extra €720 per year under CO2 levies. The so-called AFIR regulation provides the government with another tool to fund zero-emission fleets by 2040. Electric vehicles continue to receive subsidies, while diesel operators face potential penalties.

Next year, the next financial hammer will hit. The EU carbon trading system enters a new phase, now including transportation and industrial fuels, while E-alternatives benefit from special discounts. With virtually no fiscal constraints, Brussels and Berlin will pour billions into charging infrastructure in the coming years, including via the LIFE-IP program.

Berlin and Brussels are unleashing a firework of incentives to scale a nearly nonexistent E-truck market. The consequences — increased burdens on taxpayers and the near-elimination of productive private-sector segments from international competition — play no meaningful role in the political calculus of green central planning.

The German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) last year estimated the cost of Germany’s green transformation by 2049 — assuming the economy does not collapse before then — at €4.8–5.4 trillion, 1.3 to 1.5 times annual GDP, just for the energy transition, grid expansion, and imports. €2–2.3 trillion for energy imports, €1.2 trillion for grid costs, and €1.1–1.5 trillion for new generation capacity.

Last week, Chancellor Friedrich Merz confirmed that there is essentially no turning back. In a podcast with WELT journalists Robin Alexander and Dagmar Rosenfeld, he praised the success of the CO2 trading scheme — a redistribution mechanism that channels productive capital from functioning German industrial sectors into political control.

How long the erosion of Germany’s economic productivity can continue without severe social consequences is uncertain. Yet the fact that the public sector creates 150,000–200,000 new jobs annually suggests politics is trying to cover the economic distortions with more taxpayer money.

The DIHK study “New Paths for the Energy Transition (Plan B)” concluded that the current transformation path is unsustainable for both companies and households. Its implicit call for a technology-neutral approach did not propose abolishing CO2 trading or other fundamentally flawed regulations.

Criticism of Germany’s green transformation, regardless of origin, largely operates within the existing subsidy framework. We face a system that has become a state within a state, rewarding rent-seekers and effectively eliminating the principles of technology-neutral competition in free markets.

Environmental protection and prosperity, however, can only be reconciled through market coordination. There is no more democratic mechanism than allocating scarce resources according to the choices of free, sovereign consumers.

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Killing of Quentin Deranque: Network of violence reaches into French parliament

The violent death of Quentin Deranque at the hands of far-left militants has brought into sharp focus the links between the antifa organisation La Jeune Garde (Young Guard), the far-left party La France Insoumise (LFI), and other left-wing parties.

Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old French conservative activist, died on February 15 from injuries sustained in an assault by a group of men outside a conference given by an MEP from La France Insoumise, Rima Hassan, at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Lyon.

Two of the seven men suspected of involvement in the fatal assault are salaried parliamentary assistants to Raphaël Arnault, an LFI deputy and co-founder of the far-left group La Jeune Garde.

The first, Jacques-Élie Favrot, is an active member of the collective and had previously been subject to a fiche S, France’s state security watch listing, in connection with his antifascist activities. His employer, Arnault, had himself previously been listed.

The second suspect, Robin Chalendard, is another member of La Jeune Garde. He is also known to domestic intelligence services for his involvement in the far-left milieu and is currently subject to a fiche S.

In total, four of the suspects are reportedly flagged by intelligence services and are under active surveillance.

La Jeune Garde was founded in Lyon in 2018 by Raphaël Arnault, who has since been elected to parliament under the banner of La France Insoumise in the 2024 French legislative election. The antifa group was formally dissolved by the Interior Ministry in June 2025 following multiple incidents of violence.

Between 2019 and 2025, the Young Guard claimed responsibility for over 50 assaults through their Telegram channel, Antifa Squads, where highly violent videos were regularly shared.

Arnault himself was convicted in 2024 and given a four-month suspended prison sentence for voluntary violence committed as part of a group, in connection with events dating back to 2021.

Arnault’s statements have also been a source of controversy. On October 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas massacre, La Jeune Garde issued a statement celebrating that “the Palestinian resistance launched an unprecedented offensive against the colonial State of Israel”. 

One member of the group, Hamma Alhousseini, known as Luc Bawa, had previously expressed support on Instagram for the Boko Haram terrorist organisation and appeared to endorse the decapitation of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty, writing: “Keeps insulting and badmouthing the same religion and there’s the result [sic]”. In August 2020, he was also conclusively convicted of assault in Lyon.

Concerns over the radical Left have reached the highest levels of the French military. In a note published in July, the Directorate of Defence Intelligence and Security (DRSD) warned of an “intensification of protest actions” by far-left groups, highlighting incidents of sabotage and arson targeting French defence companies.

Similar alarm exists within French law enforcement. A report from the National Gendarmerie Directorate (DGGN) noted that the growing use of violent tactics by the far-left, particularly its environmentalist branch, is especially troubling when such movements benefit from strong political support.

“The real cause for concern is not the existence of violent fringe groups – such movements have long existed across the political spectrum – but that they now receive open support from an institutional party represented in the National Assembly”, Guillaume Bigot a French MP for the National Rally (RN) told Brussels Signal.

For Guillaume Bigot, La France Insoumise’s tolerance for violence is rooted in its ideological inheritance from Trotskyism.

He contends that political opponents deemed “illegitimate” by the Left are routinely branded as Nazis. “This is what I call ‘hatefully correct,’” Bigot says. “The implication is clear: If LFI fails to achieve its aims through the ballot box, and if its ‘Nazified’ opponents come to power democratically, then the existing order may be considered legitimately overthrowable.”

In a video published on her YouTube channel in February 2020, reflecting on the death of Quentin Derangue, Mathilde Panot, president of the LFI parliamentary group, declared: “We will never accept, in our country, that fascism comes to power legally through the ballot box, which is what Marine Le Pen wants to do.”

Despite the political scandal following the arrest of Arnault’s parliamentary assistants, LFI has shown no inclination to distance itself from its deputy. When asked in an interview on BFMTV on February 22 whether Arnault could be suspended or excluded from the parliamentary group, Panot was unequivocal: “Certainly not. I am proud to have Raphaël Arnault in my group.”

The day before Quentin Deranque’s death, LFI issued a statement supporting La Jeune Garde’s appeal to the Conseil d’État (Council of State) against its dissolution: “We say it proudly: La Jeune Garde is essential.” 

In April 2025, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, LFI’s leader, publicly described the group at a rally in Auxerre as “an allied organisation, linked to the Insoumis movement,” adding: “Tomorrow, 1 May, I call on all my Insoumis comrades to group themselves behind the banner of La Jeune Garde. I speak of them with passion, for they are my young comrades.”

The open ties between La Jeune Garde and LFI have been documented by French media Le Canard Enchaîné and Le Nouvel Observateur (July 2024), which noted that “in recent months, La Jeune Garde, now established in several cities across France, had placed itself at the service of LFI, overseeing meetings by their leaders in universities, where the situation in the Gaza Strip had been widely discussed.” 

But the political controversy surrounding Quentin Deranque’s death has extended well beyond the National Assembly and LFI, implicating the city of Lyon itself, governed since 2020 by Green mayor Grégory Doucet.
The first spark came a week after Deranque’s death, when Doucet refused to display his portrait on the façade of the Hôtel de Ville, a gesture requested in a public opinion piece by Jean-Michel Aulas, mayoral candidate. “Mr. Aulas’s request is nothing short of indecent,” Doucet told BFMTV on February 19.

The controversy deepened with revelations that the city of Lyon had worked with the Young Guard. A city spokesperson told Brussels Signal that contacts with La Jeune Garde had indeed taken place “to obtain information about recurring far-right violence in the Vieux Lyon district.” However, the spokesperson insisted that these exchanges were limited to “informal and non-contractual” consultations and ended in 2022.

Following Quentin Deranque’s death, Marine Tondelier, leader of the Greens, came under criticism after it was recalled that she had co-signed a May 2025 tribune in the communist newspaper L’Humanité opposing the dissolution of La Jeune Garde.

However, the controversy has engulfed the entire left-wing political spectrum. During the 2024 legislative elections, the coalition Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), which included LFI, the Greens, the Socialist Party, and the French Communist Party, displayed La Jeune Garde’s name among its listed supporters on its website and on some of its official mobilisation kits.

Following the death of Quentin Deranque, former Socialist president and current MP François Hollande also came under criticism for having been elected as part of the NFP, since it had publicly disclosed its support from La Jeune Garde.

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France: Killer who avoided prison in 2017 due to his mental health arrested for armed robbery and kidnap while on psychiatric leave

Kobili Traoré, who was ruled not criminally responsible for the 2017 killing of Sarah Halimi, has been taken into police custody on suspicion of armed robbery and kidnapping after being granted leave from a psychiatric hospital.

As reported by Le Journal du Dimanche, the 36-year-old was among four suspects arrested on Wednesday in connection with a violent home invasion that took place on Jan. 27 in Paris’ 16th arrondissement.

A man in his forties was reportedly attacked in his apartment by intruders who sprayed him with tear gas before beating and kicking him. He was then dragged through the property as the assailants searched the premises.

The victim was tied to a chair, gagged, and burned with a cigarette, investigators said. Watches, jewelry, and other valuables were stolen, with the estimated loss put at nearly €100,000. The other suspects detained in the case were described as already known to the authorities.

Traoré had been hospitalized in a psychiatric ward in Val-de-Marne following a court ruling that he could not be held criminally responsible for the killing of Halimi. On the night of April 4, 2017, he broke into the apartment of the 65-year-old Jewish woman in Paris’ 11th arrondissement, beat her, and threw her from her balcony while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and calling her “sheitan,” meaning devil in Arabic.

In 2019, judges concluded that his criminal responsibility had been abolished at the time of the attack due to an acute psychotic episode linked to heavy cannabis consumption. In April 2021, the Court of Cassation upheld that decision, confirming that he could not be tried because his judgment had been deemed legally abolished during the events.

The ruling sparked widespread controversy in France and prompted legislative changes clarifying criminal responsibility in cases involving voluntary intoxication.

Following news of his latest arrest, senior figures on the nationalist right renewed criticism of the justice system. National Rally grandee Marine Le Pen wrote on X, “Kobili Traoré murdered his neighbor Sarah Halimi. This antisemitic killer was declared criminally irresponsible for having smoked cannabis before his crime. He is reportedly in police custody for armed robbery and allegedly kidnapping a man. This impunity is unbearable, shameful, and revolting.”

Marion Maréchal also reacted, stating: “Kobili Traoré, the antisemitic murderer of Sarah Halimi, had been deemed criminally irresponsible in a highly questionable manner. Result: He regained his freedom and has just been arrested again for theft and kidnapping.

“The French no longer want a justice system that fails to protect and no longer deters. This issue enjoys broad consensus in society. We are waiting for action.”

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Trump: ‘Major Combat Operations’ Underway to ‘Obliterate’ Iranian Missile Factories

Truth Social

U.S. President Donald Trump told the Iranian armed forces to lay down their arms or face “certain death” and its people to rise up and “seize control of your destiny” as “major” strikes against Tehran commenced.

Joint American-Israeli strikes against Iran took place over night, with U.S. President Donald Trump addressing both the nation and the people of Iran. Announcing the strikes to eliminate “imminent threats from the Iranian regime” which “directly endangers the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world”, Trump said: “A short time ago, the United States Military began major combat operations in Iran”.

Iranian retaliatory strikes have been launched against Israel.

The strikes are intended to destroy Iran’s stockpiles of missiles and to ‘obliterate’ Iran’s missile production industry, the President said. Most importantly, Trump said, was preventing Iranian nuclear-tipped long-range missiles from ever threatening the American mainland or America’s allies in Europe.

President Trump said:

Iran is the world’s no.1 state sponsor of terror and has recently killed tens of thousands of its own people [… which is] developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could seen reach the American homeland.

… for these reasons the United States military has undertaken a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests. We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It’s going to be totally, again, obliterated.

While noting “every possible step” to minimise threat to U.S. military personnel had been taken, President Trump warned the combat operations afoot were of sufficient scale that there may be casualties. He said:

I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.

But we’re not doing this for now, we’re doing it for the future and it is a noble mission. We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran. We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm’s way and we trust that with his help the men and woman of the armed forces will prevail.

The U.S. President called on the armed forces, paramilitary, and police of Iran to lay down their weapons. If they did so they would receive “complete immunity” and be treated fairly, he said, but else would face “certain death”. To the Iranian people, he called on them to take this opportunity to rise up against the government, stating “the hour of your freedom is at hand” and that a second opportunity to take control was likely not coming. He said:

Stay sheltered, don’t leave your home, it’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will, probably be your only chance for generations… now is the time to seize control of your destiny

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed his people early Saturday morning stating the joint strikes with the U.S. were to remove the “existential threat”. Netanyahu said: “For 47 years, the Ayatollah regime has called out ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to America.’ It has shed our blood, murdered many Americans, and massacred its own people… This murderous terror regime must not be allowed to arm itself with nuclear weapons that would enable it to threaten all of humanity”, reports The Times of Israel.

Air raid sirens sounded across Israel as Iran launched retaliatory ballistic strikes, it was stated. The Israeli Defence Force said in a series of statements of what it said were multiple Iranian “barrages”: “A short while ago, the IDF identified missiles launched from Iran toward Israel… At this time, the IAF is operating to intercept and strike threats where necessary to remove the threat.”

Additionally, the BBC reports blasts were heard in Bahrain’s Manama, the home port of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

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‘Zionist War Criminal’: Palestine Activists Vandalise Churchill Statue at Parliament

The large bronze statue of British hero and wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square has again been defaced, this time by ‘pro-Palestine’ attackers.

Winston Churchill’s statue outside Britain’s Houses of Parliament, the national legislature his personality dominated for 40 years as a member, government minister, and two-time Prime Minister has been vandalised overnight. The statue and plinth was painted with messages in red, including “Zionist war criminal”, “free Palestine”, “stop the genocide”, “globalise the Intifada”, and “never again is now”.

Screenshot youtube
Screenshot youtube

A fourth side was tagged in Dutch, with messages including “Groeten uit Den Haag” [‘Greetings from the Hague’], and “Káp Nâh” [‘cut it out’ rendered phonetically for the distinctive “lower-class Hague accent”].

Metropolitan Police say they have made an arrest. Their statement related:

Overnight, the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square was graffitied with red paint.

Officers were on scene within two minutes of being alerted shortly after 4am.

A 38-yr-old man is in custody having been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage.

The BBC now reports Dutch pro-Palestine activist group ‘Free the Filton 24’ has claimed responsibility for the vandalism. The group’s name refers to a group of prisoners taken by the British government after a Palestine direct action group raided a defence factory belonging to Elbit Systems UK in Filton, Bristol.

There is no indication yet of whether the arrested male is British or a Dutch migrant.

After the vandalism was discovered, Westminster Council employees wrapped the statue in black plastic. Later, a crew of heritage cleaning professionals started to remove the paint.

Last year, London’s Metropolitan Police stated that in the wake of the Australia Bondi Beach and England Synagogue antisemitic attacks, use of the phrase “globalise the Intifada” in public protests would trigger arrest because “Violent acts have taken place, the context has changed – words have meaning and consequence. We will act decisively and make arrests.”

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Britain’s Double Standard on Extremism

No one knows who they were or what they were doing: Just Stop Oil vandalizing Stonehenge in 2024.
 Just Stop Oil via Wikimedia Commons

The recent brutal killing of the nationalist student Quentin Deranque in Lyon by suspected far-left ‘anti-fascists’ has provoked serious questions in France regarding the inconsistencies between reactions to left-wing and right-wing extremism. Also, various journalistic outlets in the United Kingdom have pored over the tragic tale, some with the tacit perspective that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in Blighty. While such lethal left-leaning violence rarely occurs in Britain, we do, of course, have various groups on the hard left, and, just as in France, the responses to the very notions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ are extremely different.  

The overlooked reality is that far-right extremism is treated as one of the primary domestic threats (viewed on a par with Islamism), while far-left extremism is consistently minimised, excused or rebranded as activism. The result is a political and media culture that sees right-wing violence as ideological terrorism but often treats left-wing violence as understandable, even romantic, protest. The issue is not whether far-right extremism exists—it clearly does—but whether left-wing extremism is judged by the same yardstick. Many of us would argue that the answer is no.

One striking example is the case of the anarchist bomb plotter Jacob Graham. Convicted in February 2024, he stockpiled bomb-making chemicals and produced a manual describing attacks on members of parliament and government buildings. Graham stated that he wanted to “kill dozens of people.” If a neo-Nazi had written the same plans, the story would likely have dominated the public debate about extremism for months. Instead, the case passed with almost non-existent political discussion. This is a textbook example of ideology influencing how terrorism is perceived. Indeed, a group of teenagers creating nasty memes in their bedrooms seems to be enough to warrant proscription as a far-right terrorist group in the modern ‘Yookay.’ 

Few movements illustrate the double standard more clearly than Palestine Action, which “works to secure Palestinian rights” by carrying out various illegal actions. The group openly advocates direct action against arms manufacturers. Supporters call it civil resistance. Critics call it organised, extremist sabotage. Members have broken into military facilities, occupied factories, and caused millions of pounds’ worth of damage. In one notorious incident, a Palestine Action activist broke a female police officer’s spine with a sledgehammer, yet walked free from court. 

If a nationalist group had repeatedly attacked businesses linked to immigration or multiculturalism, it would certainly be labelled as extremist. Yet Palestine Action is still widely described as an activist operation rather than an extremist movement. In July 2025, the group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation, but there remains a widespread, ongoing campaign to reverse the government’s decision. This would never happen with a right-wing group.

Environmental radicalism has also crossed into extremism. The Earth Liberation Front was founded in Britain and promoted economic sabotage, arson attacks, and the destruction of private property. Security agencies have described such tactics as eco-terrorism. Yet environmental extremism is often framed sympathetically as youthful idealism or moral urgency, rather than an extremist ideology. Extremist environmental activism is one of the few ideological movements where criminality is routinely moralised rather than condemned. We only have to look at the reactions to the antics of Just Stop Oil’s elderly, privileged militants to see that. 

Far-left terrorism is not new in Britain. The anarchist group the Angry Brigade carried out around 25 bombings in the 1970s, targeting politicians, banks, and institutions. These were clear ideological attacks intended to destabilise the state. Yet the Angry Brigade is rarely cited in modern discussions about domestic extremism, and if it is at all, it is sentimentalised. Right-wing extremists from the same period are remembered as threats; left-wing extremists are just starry-eyed radicals.

This imbalance is not accidental. Universities lean politically left; much of the media is skewed towards the progressive; activist organisations influence policy; cultural institutions sympathise with left-wing causes. This creates a system where right-wing extremism equals a philosophical threat, whereas left-wing extremism equals social protest. The difference is often one of language rather than behaviour. Criminal damage is ‘direct action.’ Intimidation is ‘civil resistance.’ Political violence is ‘anti-fascism.’

One of the clearest signs of imbalance is how extremism is defined. Right-wing extremism is usually defined in ideological terms: nationalism, racism, or anti-immigration beliefs combined with radicalisation. Left-wing extremism is often defined only once violence becomes extreme. This means right-wing ideology alone is labelled as extremist, while left-wing ideology must become violent first. This inflates the perceived scale of one threat while shrouding the other. 

Britain does have a far-right extremism problem, but she also has an unambiguous far-left extremism problem. However, only one is treated as a national emergency. From this perspective, the issue is not one of exaggeration alone; it is also one of selective outrage. Until violence and intimidation are judged, across our continent, by the same standards regardless of ideology, the European approach to extremism will remain biased rather than neutral. 

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Germany: Muslim Green Party Senate Vice-President causes scandal with suitcases belonging to Holocaust victims

Bremen City Parliament Bremer Rathaus – Google Maps

Several political groups in the Bremen City Parliament reacted with horror to a post featuring Vice-President Sahhanim Görgü-Philipp (Green Party). In an Instagram photo, which has since been deleted, captioned ‘Done for today!’, she was seen smiling next to SPD MP Katharina Kähler, holding two suitcases from the City Parliament’s Holocaust exhibition. ‘In my view, she is no longer acceptable as vice-president,’ Jan Timke, leader of the Alliance Germany parliamentary group, told JUNGE FREIHEIT on Friday.
The politician described the picture as ‘tasteless.’ As patron of the exhibition, Görgu-Philipp should have shown ‘more sensitivity,’ he said. ‘Anyone who treats exhibits on the Holocaust in this way does not have the intellectual maturity to hold office.’

The FDP also complained that the photo was ‘unbeatable in its irreverence’. Party leader Thore Schäck emphasised that ‘mocking Holocaust victims’ in this way was ‘absolutely’ unacceptable. ‘A public apology is the least that can be expected,’ he told the Weser-Kurier newspaper. CDU parliamentary group leader Frank Imhoff expressed similar sentiments. ‘We expect the Vice-President of the Bremen City Parliament, who opened this exhibition herself, to be particularly aware of the dignity of her office and to treat the culture of remembrance with respect and sensitivity,’ he told the newspaper.
Görgu-Philipp herself spoke of an ‘unforgivable mistake’ that she could no longer undo. ‘The whole thing is very upsetting to me, I am so sorry,’ she said. Her SPD colleague Kähler, who had published the photo on her channel, also expressed ‘sincere’ regret. At the same time, she spoke of a ‘momentary lapse’ that she had not thought through sufficiently. Bürgerschaft President Antje Grotheer (SPD) announced that both politicians had already apologised to her. At the same time, she called the image ‘completely inappropriate’.
The exhibition ‘Showing the Unimaginable – Comics Against Forgetting’ opened over two weeks ago. It deals with the artistic representation of the Holocaust through comics and displays original exhibits from the Nazi era, including the suitcases carried by Görgu-Philipp.

jungefreiheit

French prosecutors probe Al-Fayeds over sex trafficking

Mohamed Al Fayed during Mohamed Al Fayed Opens Harrods in London, Great Britain. Screenshot youtube

He traded on the glamour of owning Harrods, the Paris Ritz and luxury yachts, but Mohamed Al-Fayed was at the centre of a dark web of alleged abuse, say French lawyers for women who liken him to US sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

French authorities began investigating the late Egyptian businessman and his brother Salah last year amid allegations of a vast system of sex trafficking and abuse on French soil.

“Every time I met Mohamed Al-Fayed, he tried to assault me,” his former personal assistant Kristina Svensson told French police of her two years working at the Ritz.

Her testimony is all too familiar.

The alleged crimes of Mohamed Al-Fayed, who died in 2023 aged 94, first came to light in a BBC investigation in September 2024. In it, several young women who worked at his upmarket London department store Harrods accused him of rape and sexual assault.

British police told AFP that 154 victims have so far come forward to say the former owner of Premier League club Fulham abused them.

His brother Salah, who died in 2010, is also accused.

But frustrated by London Metropolitan Police’s investigation of the alleged crimes, which span more than 35 years, some victims have turned to France in the hope of finding justice.

“In England they’re ignoring the trafficking… They just want to make it about Al-Fayed and Harrods,” said Rachael Louw, a former Al-Fayed employee, speaking for the first time about her ordeal.

The French investigation, however, is handled by “a unit specialised in human trafficking,” she told AFP.

It is “a relief that our cases are actually being recognised as trafficking”.

Louw was 23 when her bosses sent her to Salah Fayed’s yacht on the French Riviera. Now after 31 years she was able to testify about what happened there to French investigators on February 10.

Louw told AFP she was first “spotted” by Mohamed Al-Fayed in 1993 while working as a sales assistant at Harrods. Shortly after, she was placed on a management training scheme, which required her to submit to a medical exam by a Harley Street doctor before being employed by the chairman’s office in the summer of 1994.

The medical appointment went far beyond a standard checkup, with a pelvic exam and “thorough breast exam”, smear and HIV tests.

And the results were not kept confidential.

The report, seen by AFP, was handed over to Harrods, and described Louw’s personal life: her parents’ separation when she was young, her father living in the United States and the death of her mother and grandmother.

The doctor also noted that she took a birth control pill, had a boyfriend and was in “excellent” health.

The doctor “sent confidential information to arm the rapist”, said French lawyer Eva Joly, who is representing Louw and another former Al-Fayed assistant.

“These young women were like meat, and they wanted to know if they were fit to consume,” said Caroline Joly, another member of the legal team.

Several encounters were arranged between Louw and Salah Fayed at his home in London’s glitzy Park Lane, where Louw said she was drugged with “a crack cocaine mix”.

Louw was then offered a job as an assistant to Salah in France and she was sent there by private jet.

She said she refused further drugs, “and because he didn’t push anymore, I thought it was okay”.

“I had no reason not to trust this man… this was my first job from university.”

Staff confiscated her passport as she flew from London’s Luton airport to his yacht. And once she arrived, “nothing” resembled the job she signed up for.

“I thought I was supposed to be filing paperwork, making arrangements, organising office work,” she said.

Instead “there was no office, no normal working hours, no time off. I was expected to just be with him”, she said.

Louw recalled appearing alongside Salah Fayed at dinners attended by elderly, wealthy men with “young girls and lots of touching”.

When she managed to call her boyfriend, who worked at Harrods, he was fired.

One night, Louw woke up to find Salah in her bed, claiming he was lonely, she said.

“I went ramrod straight and the rest of the night I was awake just lying there petrified,” she said, fearing any movement would be an invitation for him to touch her.

“I didn’t know what he would do to me… I didn’t feel safe.”

She saw other young women in the Fayeds’ orbit.

On a trip to Saint Tropez she encountered a red-headed “young girl”, possibly younger than herself, sunbathing on Mohamed Al-Fayed’s yacht that was moored just off his villa.

“Mohamed starts rubbing lotion all over this girl, she’s wearing a bathing suit and then he started to kiss her,” Louw told AFP.

“I don’t remember anything else” of that day, she said, “so I don’t know if there were drugs, I can’t say for sure whether I was drugged that afternoon,” she added.

What jolted her to escape was the prospect of being trapped alone with Salah after he bought a speedboat with only one bedroom, telling her “that he would take me to sail around the Italian coast”.

“I knew that if I went on that boat nothing good would happen,” she said.

Panicked, she booked the first Air France flight out and worked up the courage to ask for her passport back, which she received although it was clear Salah “was very angry”.

Home again, “I had blocked out” the details of what happened, she said. “I didn’t want to remember.”

For decades she feared she was bound by a confidentiality agreement she had signed at her interview, but seeing other victims speak out against Al-Fayed in 2024, she reconsidered.

“How can I be silent? There has to be a cost to what the perpetrators did. Because if they go unpunished, it emboldens the next man.

“If we women do not speak up we become complicit in our own oppression… powerful men will never change a system that benefits them.”

Despite the deaths of the brothers, the women hope investigators can still track down who enabled the trafficking network.

“There is no such thing as a small piece of information. Every element is useful for the investigation,” Al-Fayed assistant Svensson said, calling on victims and witnesses to speak to police.

The Swedish woman arrived in France in 1993 and was placed by a temp agency at the Ritz in 1998, then owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed, as his assistant.

Svensson, aged 30 at the time, was to help him manage his affairs after the death of his son Dodi with Princess Diana in a Paris car crash, perceived as a prestigious assignment.

During her interview with the Ritz management, the questions posed were “focused” on her appearance and her personal background, she said, even pointing out that she was the “spitting image” of Al-Fayed’s wife.

The Ritz then sent her to Harrods in London for an interview with Al-Fayed himself, and organised accommodation for her at a luxury residence he owned.

“I had brought my CV. He wasn’t interested in that. He only asked me personal questions.”

What followed was a regular pattern of meetings with Al-Fayed. Svensson said she was left in a room alone for hours with no instruction, until he eventually arrived and she would endure sexual assault and attempted rape during which “he’d laugh”.

“I hoped that in time he would see that I wasn’t interested in him and that he would take me seriously,” Svensson told police.

“I was a foreigner, with no family or network in the country, no knowledge of French labour law, and no one to lean on financially if I quit.”

In retrospect, Svensson compares herself to a closely watched “luxury product” which Al-Fayed wanted to possess — “a doll on a shelf”.

Al-Fayed was born Mohamed Fayed in Alexandria, but later changed his surname to the grander Al-Fayed, while his brother kept the original family name.

At the Ritz, she recalls that staff warned her that there were “microphones and cameras in every corner”. And at a villa in Saint Tropez, she said a housekeeper suggested that she block her bedroom door at night.

The Ritz Paris told AFP in a statement that it was “deeply saddened by the testimonies and the allegations of abuse” and that it is “ready to fully cooperate with the judicial authorities. Our teams do not tolerate any form of inappropriate behaviour, which would be a serious breach of our code of conduct.

“We want to express our deepest respect to the women who spoke out,” it added.

Harrods said it “continues to support the bravery of all women in coming forward. Their claims point to the breadth of abuse by Mohamed Fayed and again raise serious allegations against his brother, Salah Fayed. The picture that has emerged suggests that this pattern of abusive behaviour took place wherever they operated.”

They said more than 180 survivors had already received counselling support through its independent advocate. The store also urged survivors to claim compensation through the Harrods Redress Scheme.

London’s Metropolitan police said its “investigation into those who could have facilitated or enabled Mohamed Al-Fayed’s offending continues” and urged victims to come forward.

“The way the Met works has moved on immeasurably, and our teams have transformed the way we investigate rape and sexual offences.”

Lawyers for the two women say their testimony helps sketch the outlines of a “powerful system” of trafficking which resembles the one established during the same period by Epstein.

“As with Epstein, with the Al-Fayeds there is a frenzied consumption of young women and an organised system to procure them,” said lawyer Eva Joly, a former judge and European parliament member.

“The pattern is the same: selecting vulnerable young women, transport, accommodation, isolation and money, which is used to intimidate or corrupt,” she said.

And as with the Epstein case, while the statute of limitations may have expired, an investigation into the Al-Fayeds can still establish the facts and identify any victims whose cases could be still prosecuted.

“We are only at the beginning of piecing the puzzle together in France,” Joly insisted.

brusselssignal

UK: Afghan asylum seeker jailed for 10 years for rape of ‘vulnerable intoxicated’ woman

hampshire.police

An asylum seeker from Afghanistan has been jailed for 10 years for the rape of a “vulnerable intoxicated” woman nearly four years ago.

After a trial at Southampton Crown Court, Musafar Hotak, 25, was convicted of the rape and sexual assault by penetration of the woman in the early hours of July 12, 2022.

The court heard that the victim had left the Cafe Parfait bar in Southampton when she was asked to leave by the bouncers for being too drunk.

Café Parfait – Google Maps

As she attempted to contact her girlfriend, the defendant, who was 22 at the time, began to follow her before a voicemail sent on the victim’s phone heard her telling him to stop.

The court was told that the next thing the complainant remembered was waking up in Hotak’s home, with him lying on top of her, sexually assaulting her, then raping her.

She repeatedly told him to stop but she felt unable to prevent him because he was using “a lot of force”, the court heard.

After she escaped, she contacted police and an intimate swab taken from her was matched to the defendant’s DNA.

Reading her personal impact statement to the court, the victim said she lived in “constant fear” and the attack had “left scars in every part of my life” which had led her to self-harm and an attempt to take her own life.

She said: “What happened to me destroyed my life in ways I never thought possible. I didn’t just feel violated, I felt erased.

“Since that day I have lived in fear, shame, silence and unbearable pain that I can’t fully describe.

“I was left feeling broken and empty and terrified of the world around me”.

Judge Gary Lucie sentenced Hotak to a 10-year prison term with a four-year extended period on licence, imposed an indefinite restraining order on him not to contact the victim and placed him on the sex offenders’ register.

He told Hotak, who was assisted by a Pashtu interpreter: “The Home Office will consider whether to deport you.

“You took advantage of the victim who was very drunk.

“It is obvious your offending has had a severe psychological impact on her which will probably remain with her for the rest of her life.

“I want to pay tribute to her for her bravery in coming forward and going through what must have been a very difficult time for her”.

gbnews

Britain’s Far-Left Just Stole an Election Through Muslim Voter Fraud and Even Leftist Media is Admitting It!

Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer giving her victory speech.

Britain’s far-left Green Party has defeated Nigel Farage’s Reform Party in a Manchester special election marred by Muslim voter fraud.

The Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer won 49 percent of the vote against the 29 percent won by Reform UK’s Matthew Goodwin.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party was pushed into third place with some 26 percent.

The election took place in the constituency of Gorton and Denton in Manchester, which has a very high Muslim population.

Shortly after polls closed, reports emerged that the Greens may have benefited from so-called “family voting” in heavily Muslim areas.

Many voted Green as a protest over Gaza, reinforcing Britain’s deepening slide into sectarian politics.

“Family voting” refers to multiple relatives entering a single polling booth together.

The practice is illegal under British electoral law, as it can involve one person influencing or directing how another family member casts their ballot.

Writing on the X platform, Reform leader Nigel Farage noted that incidents of family voting had “reached the highest levels of any election in the past 10 years.”

“This is deeply concerning and raises serious questions about the integrity of the democratic process in predominantly Muslim areas,” he wrote.

The fraud was so blatant that even leftist media outlets like The Guardian are admitting that something was awry.

The paper reported:

Democracy Volunteers, an organisation founded by Dr John Ault, and supported by the Conservative peer and psephologist Prof Robert Haywood, deployed four accredited election observers across the constituency. The team attended 22 of the 45 polling stations while polls were open, spending between 30 and 45 minutes in each, working in pairs.

The organisation said its volunteers were looking at people appearing to collude on votes in breach of secret ballot rules, which it called “family voting”, as well as the impact of the requirement for voters to show ID before they were issued with a ballot paper.

…

Democracy Volunteers said that while the enactment of the Ballot Secrecy Act in 2023 made “family voting” more clearly a breach of the secret ballot, signage to discourage the practice was only seen in 45% of the polling stations observed.

The observing team said they saw family voting in 15 of the 22 polling stations observed, reporting 32 cases in total, nine cases in one polling station alone. They observed a sample of 545 voters casting their votes, of which they said 12% either directed or were affected by family voting.

Just like in America, wherever the far left and mass immigration take root, the stealing of elections is never far behind.

thegatewaypundit