German government in crisis as secret police denies neonazi violence

This video is about a neonazi violent manhunt, especially against Afghan war refugees, in Chemnitz in Germany on 26 August 2018.

Among the slogans shouted by the Chemnitz nazi rioters, heard in this video, were (translated):

Disgusting subhuman cattle [to refugees]!
For every dead German there will be a dead foreigner!
See how they run, these pests, amazing!
Foreigners out!
Get out of our city!
German, social and national!

From Reuters news agency today:

Divided German leaders to meet next week over spymaster’s future

* Interior minister says he has confidence in Maassen

* SPD says domestic intelligence chief must go

* Seehofer jeered in parliament as he defends Maassen (Updates with additional talks planned Tuesday)

By Andreas Rinke

BERLIN, Sept 13 – The leaders of Germany’s ruling parties said they would meet on Tuesday to try to agree whether the embattled head of the domestic intelligence agency should keep his job, coalition sources told Reuters.

Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has been under fire since a newspaper interview last week in which he questioned the authenticity of video footage showing right-wing extremists hounding migrants.

The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), coalition partners of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, want to fire Maassen. Conservative interior minister Horst Seehofer says he sees no reason to do so.

Merkel, Seehofer and SPD leader Andrea Nahles met at the chancellery for two hours on Thursday, but agreed to maintain silence on the issue until a follow-up meeting on Tuesday afternoon, the sources said.

The debate over Maassen’s future adds to tensions already plaguing Merkel’s loveless coalition, which nearly split earlier this year over immigration policy.

Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, an SPD member, said Maassen had lost credibility and that consequences should follow.

“Whoever heads up a security institution in our country must enjoy full confidence and it is clear that this confidence no longer exists and there must be consequences”, Scholz, a Social Democrat, told reporters. …

The BfV denied a report by the public broadcaster ARD that said Maassen had told a lawmaker from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) about parts of his agency’s annual report before it was published.

Jeering and shouting could be heard from lawmakers as Seehofer mounted his defence of Maassen, whose questioning of the video’s authenticity was greeted with incredulity by some politicians and reporters on the scene.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s government said on Tuesday it would replace the head of its domestic intelligence agency who has faced accusations of harboring far-right sympathies, putting an end to a row that exposed divisions in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government. Hans-Georg Maassen, who had questioned the authenticity of video footage showing far-right radicals hounding migrants in the eastern German city of Chemnitz, will become a senior official at the interior ministry once he leaves the BfV agency, the government said in a statement: here.

By Ulrich Rippert in Germany, 20 September 2018:

The coalition committee met Tuesday evening under the auspices of the three party leaders and agreed that Maaßen would be replaced as BfV president. However, far from being dismissed, he would be given a position as state secretary in Seehofer’s Interior Ministry.

Maaßen was not fired, he was given a promotion. He now holds a high position in the ministry that has powers of oversight and direction of the BfV. The coalition leaders declared that Maaßen would not be responsible for overseeing the BfV in his new post, but Seehofer made clear the worthlessness of this claim by stating repeatedly that he valued Maaßen’s work as a leading political official.

The indications are that Maaßen will function as Seehofer’s right-hand man. He will receive a much higher salary as a state secretary than he did as head of the BfV.

UPDATE 21 September 2018: many angry reactions to Maassen’s promotion, still trouble in government coalition.