During the course of an investigation into sedition, the home of the Thuringian AfD state chairman, Björn Höcke, was searched. This was confirmed by a spokesman for the responsible public prosecutor in Mühlhausen on Saturday.
The public prosecutor’s office has been dealing with allegations against Höcke for almost a year, including statements Höcke is said to have written on social media against sea rescuer Carola Rackete. The search should provide information about the authorship of the statements, said the spokesman for the authorities.
Höcke is suspected of having posted a picture of Rackete with the line: “I imported torture, sexual violence, human trafficking and murder.” He could have stigmatized a certain group of people — refugees — as criminals, according to the public prosecutor.
The judiciary committee of the state parliament lifted Höcke’s immunity in December of last year so that the public prosecutor’s investigation could officially begin.
AfD: Public prosecutor’s office has moved far away from the Constitution
“The house search of the chairman of the strongest opposition faction in the Thuringian state parliament based on a Facebook post that is obviously covered by the fundamental right of freedom of expression is another low point in the abuse of the judiciary against supposedly insubordinate political opinions,“ stated AfD spokesman Stefan Möller on Saturday evening.
The AfD will “support all legal and political measures to determine how far the public prosecutor’s office has removed itself from the Constitution with this serious encroachment on the family’s privacy.”
Höcke was also the founder of a “wing” of the party, which was later classified as a right-wing extremist faction. The group has been formally dissolved, but in the opinion of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the program and personal potential of the “wing” in the AfD’s regional association have continued. Thomas Haldenwang, president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has called Höcke a right-wing extremist.
Last week, it became known that the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution has now classified the AfD state association under Höcke’s leadership as extremist.
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