German Pegida Hitler copycat falsely accuses refugee of murder

The image of Lutz Bachmann styled as Adolf Hitler was published by the Dresden Morgenpost after a reader spotted it on Facebook

This image of Lutz Bachmann, fuehrer of the racist Pegida organisation in Germany, who had styled himself as Adolf Hitler, was published by the Dresden Morgenpost.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

Police investigates possibly hatemongering tweets by Pegida founder

The German police are investigating whether Pegida founder Lutz Bachmann is guilty of hate speech when he falsely accused a man of murdering a 14-year-old girl on Twitter. Last Wednesday, the girl was killed in her home in Berlin by knife stabbing.

Extreme right-wing groups reacted furiously to her death on social media. According to them, the authorities covered up the identity of the perpetrator, because it supposedly was an immigrant. Members of the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland

Dear NOS: Once again, neo-fascist organisations like the AfD are not ‘populist’. They are racist.

, the largest opposition party of parliament, also shared these messages on Twitter and Facebook.

Bachmann actively participated in spreading the accusations. He wrote on Twitter that a Chechen man, whom he called an “ex-refugee and the beast of the Caucasus”, was the perpetrator. He also placed two photos with a link to the personal Facebook page of the Chechen.

The man turned out to have nothing to do with the murder. The German police arrested a 15-year-old classmate of the girl on suspicion of the murder. …

The Pegida founder is controversial in Germany. For example, he has been convicted several times for burglaries, violence and drug possession. He is now suspected of hate speech, for which he was also condemned in 2016 after he had abused refugees on social media. He then had to pay a fine of 9600 euros.

Germany’s grand coalition of conservative parties and the Social Democratic Party is intent on stepping up the deportation of refugees and expanding the country’s system of deportation centres. At the beginning of April, the administration of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) also decided to tighten up its rules for deportations. A report in the current edition of Der Spiegel deals with the dire consequences of such policies for those incarcerated in the detention centre of Büren (NRW): here.