Probe over Frankfurt police neo-Nazi network widens

Amid an ongoing probe over a neo-Nazi network within the Frankfurt police force, a German police officer in Hesse was identified as a suspect for leaking internal information to a member of a neo-Nazi group. According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, this is the sixth police officer who is suspected to have connections with neo-Nazis within the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany (LKA) in Hesse.

The German Police Federation (GdP) acknowledged the presence of right-wing radical elements among its officers following the suspension of five officers in Frankfurt in December. The investigation over the far-right network has also widened to other cities, as a police station in the Marburg-Biedenkopf district of the same province was put under investigation.

Frankfurt prosecutors have probed five officers from the city's first police district in relation to the use of a digital messenger service to disseminate insulting and xenophobic material in text and image format. The four male and one female officers in Frankfurt have been suspended from their duties during an ongoing investigation.

According to the German daily Frankfurter Neue Presse, a group called "NSP 2.0" sent threatening letters containing racist statements to Seda Başay Yıldız, one of the lawyers for the victims of the neo-Nazi terrorist group, the National Socialist Underground (NSU). One of the letters sent in August even targeted the lawyer's daughter. The NSU killed eight Turkish immigrants, one Greek citizen and a German police officer between 2000 and 2007, but the murders have long remained unresolved. Recent investigations have revealed severe failures of intelligence and the failure of police units in the eastern state of Thuringia to disrupt the group. The NSU is believed to have been founded by three far-right extremists, Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Bohnhardt and Beate Zschaepe, who lived in Thuringia in the early 1990s.

German authorities are increasingly concerned over growing right-wing terrorism in the country. Lately, far-right groups have drawn up several "enemy lists" containing names and addresses of more than 25,000 people, a parliamentary inquiry revealed in July.

The Interior Ministry said the lists were found in various police investigations and operations against far-right groups in the last seven years. Since 2016, Germany has conducted an increasing number of nationwide raids targeting right-wing groups, including houses, apartments and other properties believed to be owned by members of such groups, targeting the so-called "Reich citizens' movement," known as the Reichsbürgers.