| Alice Weidel and Katrin Ebner-Steiner of the anti-immigration party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) |
Some members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Bavaria who are under surveillance for alleged links to extremist groups won seats in its parliamentary election at the weekend, the state’s intelligence agency said.
An agency spokesman said on Thursday that the Bavarian domestic intelligence agency was checking whether it has a constitutional mandate to continue monitoring those individuals, who are now lawmakers in the state assembly.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition is divided over whether the federal intelligence agency should monitor the AfD, which entered the national parliament for the first time in an election last year after campaigning on an anti-Islam platform.
In Bavaria the party secured 22 seats in the regional parliament based on a little over 10 percent of the vote. It drew voters from Merkel’s conservative allies in the state, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
“Among the people under surveillance by the Bavarian domestic intelligence agency are individuals who won a mandate for the AfD in the election on Oct. 14,” the Bavarian intelligence service spokesman wrote in an email.
Martin Sichert, the AfD’s leader in Bavaria, told Reuters: “This gives people the possibility to see, through the public service of our lawmakers in the regional assembly, that there is no justification for monitoring the AfD.”
The spy agency spokesman declined to say how many of the 22 AfD lawmakers were under surveillance. He said a low double-digit number of AFD party members were being monitored for possible ties to anti-Islamic and “right-wing extremist” groups.
Pressure grew on Merkel’s government to order federal agents to start monitoring the AfD after its supporters held protests in the eastern city of Chemnitz last month to denounce the fatal stabbing of a German man, allegedly by two migrants.
Skinheads clashed with police soon after a Syrian and an Iraqi were identified as suspects, and a mob attacked a Jewish restaurant, exposing bitter divisions over Merkel’s 2015 decision to welcome some one million, mainly Muslim migrants.
Soon after the protests in Chemnitz, the states of Lower Saxony and Bremen said their security services had placed the AfD’s youth wings under surveillance for suspected unconstitutional activities.
Memories of Nazi and Communist oppression have made Germans very cautious about state surveillance.