A 45-year-old man was arrested this weekend as part of the investigation into the murder of a local politician in central Germany who held openly pro-migrant positions. The German anti-terrorist prosecutor said Monday that the murder is very ‘probably linked to the extreme right.’
The German anti-terrorist prosecutor said on Monday that the murder of Walter Lübcke was most likely linked to ‘the extreme right’. Our confreres of the Spiegel also reveal that the man arrested this weekend, suspected of killing this local pro-migrant elected representative of central Germany , had already been convicted of violence and was close to a neo-Nazi movement .
‘In the current state of investigation, we assume that we are dealing with a background of extreme right’ to explain the motives of this assassination that shocked the country, told reporters the spokesman of the parquet.
Walter Lübcke was a political leader of the conservative party (CDU) of the city of Kassel, in the center of the country. He was shot at close range and was found dead on Sunday, June 2, on the terrace of his home in Wolfhagen, near Kassel. The main suspect was arrested Saturday thanks to DNA traces, according to authorities in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .
To support this view, the Karlsruhe Public Prosecutor’s Office, which deals with terrorism or organized crime, relies on the suspect’s past. This is a 45-year-old man close to the neo-Nazi movement, already convicted for acts of violence, particularly against a migrant home. In 2009, the suspect was arrested by police at a rally with several hundred nationalist activists in Dortmund.
According to the German weekly Der Spiegel , the suspect was known to be a ‘violent extremist’, reported to have been in contact with neo-Nazi militants in the ‘Combat 18’ group, one of the far-right groups the most important in Germany. A group that had, however, not been talked about in recent years. However, his direct links with this group are not yet formally established, according to the newspaper.
Investigators are trying to determine if he had accomplices but, for the time being, the prosecution has indicated that it does not have ‘evidence that the suspect was able’ to act as part of a ‘far right group’ formed for this purpose. A reference to the German neo-Nazi group NSU, responsible for the murder of a dozen immigrants in Germany in the early 2000s.
Member of the center-right party of Angela Merkel, Walter Lübcke had been targeted by death threats since 2016 for having strongly defended the reception of migrants, decided in 2015 by the Chancellor. His death triggered an avalanche of comments on social networks, many of which hailed this murder.
If the political motive was to be confirmed, it would be the first murder of this kind since the attacks of the Red Army Fraction from the 1970s. In 1981, this far left group had killed a regional minister of the Economy. , member of the liberal party FDP. It would also be the first homicide of an elected representative motivated by radical right-wing ideas since the Second World War.
