Germany Encounters Surge in Crime by the Far Right - New York Times

BERLIN — The pages of outstanding arrest warrants cover a range of crimes: robbery, blackmail, fraud, even murder. The German police classify some of the offenses as politically motivated, others as violent. But they all have one thing in common: The perpetrators are right-wing extremists.

The list, issued by Germany’s Interior Ministry last month at the request of the far-left Die Linke party, included 596 outstanding arrest warrants for 462 right-wing offenders, showing a definite surge in right-wing extremism since Germany accepted nearly one million migrants and refugees in 2015.

“We have had this divisive debate about refugees coming to Europe and especially into Germany, and along with it has also been a real, but less-recognized, peak in right-wing activities and right-wing violence,” said Gerd Wiegel, an expert on right-wing extremism and adviser to Die Linke.

Of the 462 right-wing offenders with outstanding warrants, 104 are wanted for crimes classified as violent and 106 are wanted for crimes classified as politically motivated.

While much attention has been focused on crimes by migrants or the threat of Islamic extremism, due in no small part to headline-grabbing terrorist attacks across Europe, the increase in right-wing extremist activity has occurred in many ways below the surface.

The quiet release of the statistics, only after a parliamentary request, highlighted the diffuse nature of the police and other security agencies in Germany, and the lingering deficiencies of the deliberately decentralized system set up after World War II.

Each of Germany’s 16 states controls its own police force, and federal authorities do not routinely publicize national statistics. Instead, they are compiled state by state and often released only to lawmakers on request, meaning the picture of the country’s security challenges is not necessarily complete.

For instance, statistics provided by the Interior Ministry in June in response to queries from the opposition Green Party showed an even higher number of outstanding arrest warrants for extremists classified as religious — 1,155 — with 804 of those issued in connection with Interpol searches for people believed to have fought in jihad in the Middle East.

But because the report for the Greens did not request statistics for previous years, it was unclear by how much the number had risen, even though Germany’s domestic security and intelligence agency says radical Islamists have multiplied in recent years.

At the same time, the number of violent attacks by left-wing extremists declined last year, with 167 outstanding warrants, after having sharply increased in 2015, according to the Green Party report.

The number of outstanding warrants for far-right extremists renewed concern among several experts that state law enforcement agencies were not pursuing the threat with consistent vigor, a continuing source of tension.

The Interior Ministry recorded 1,698 violent crimes with right-wing political motivations in 2016 compared with 1,029 in 2014, a surge driven by what Hajo Funke, a professor emeritus at the Free University of Berlin, called a “hate climate” toward refugees.

“I would bluntly say the rise in outstanding warrants is because of a lack of consistently going after far-right extremists by the police units,” Mr. Funke said. “That’s the decisive reason.”

Michael Roth, Germany’s minister of state for Europe, said, “Of course, I am concerned,” when asked about the growing number of right-wing extremists with outstanding warrants.

“The police in Germany are obliged to do whatever is necessary to protect the people,” he said. “We will defend our open and inclusive society. This is an obligation for all institutions in Germany not just at the federal level, but at the state level because the states are responsible for police.”

Elisabeth Schnell, a German Police Union spokeswoman, defended the performance of the forces, emphasizing that of the more than 140,000 open arrest warrants in Germany, those for far-right extremists amounted to less than 1 percent of the total.

The number of outstanding warrants for right-wing extremists had risen for a variety of reasons, including that the state police have been documenting the political backgrounds of all perpetrators more closely since 2014, said Sonja Kock, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman.

The state police do receive federal support, she said, and more intensively examine offenders with an unknown place of residence or a warrant older than half a year.

Some of the listed warrants are protective, she noted, citing one for a right-wing foreign national wanted for attempted murder who has been deported. The police would be able to immediately arrest the offender if he tried to re-enter Germany.

Still, Rainer Wendt, national chairman of the German Police Union, called the 140,000 open warrants alarming. “There is a huge enforcement deficit,” Mr. Wendt said. “This is devastating for the citizens’ subjective sense of security.”

The reluctance of German authorities to pursue far-right groups came to the forefront in November 2011, after it emerged that a far-right terrorist group was responsible for a decade of violence that claimed the lives of eight men of Turkish background, one Greek and a policewoman.

The murder trial of the sole survivor of the cell, Beate Zschäpe, began in 2013 and is continuing, and news agencies reported last week that victims’ families were suing the German government for investigative missteps and delays.

The case raised questions about Germany’s police and security services, which had focused their investigation on Turkish organized crime rather than the far right.

By March 2012 and under public scrutiny, the German police had arrested 46 of the 160 far-right extremists with outstanding warrants, including 14 of the 37 wanted in Bavaria, according to the weekly Der Spiegel.

Since then, Ms. Schnell said the German police had kept an official list of open arrest warrants for right-wing extremists.

Apprehending right-wing extremists in Germany can be particularly difficult, several experts argued, because of strict anti-Nazi laws that push them into the shadows.

“Today, when you then also see an increased number of individuals who are committing these crimes but are unable to be found, it raises concerns about the most hard-core being driven underground,” said Jonathan Birdwell, who heads policy and research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London.

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