Police and public prosecutors searched rooms of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bavarian state parliament on Thursday. A spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office said on Thursday that the basis was a criminal complaint from the state parliament, which concerned a copyright infringement in recordings from the plenary hall. An AfD office in Munich was also searched. The procedure is directed against unknown.
Specifically, it is about an older video published by the AfD faction on social networks. In it, statements by members of parliament from other parliamentary groups in a state parliament debate are said to have been distorted – because they were taken out of context. According to the public prosecutor’s office, the AfD group had refused to hand over the documents required for the investigation.
The AfD protested sharply against the search and announced legal action. Group leader Ulrich Singer criticized that “the rooms of the members of the state parliament protected by immunity were also entered illegally”. This was an “absolutely disproportionate and undoubtedly politically motivated action against an opposition party” because of an alleged copyright infringement in a video from the state parliament. Otherwise, Singer did not go into the allegations in the message.
However, Singer argued that “the use of a large contingent of state power” was “a substitute action after the court-ordered lifting of the observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution”.
In fact, however, such a comprehensive arrangement does not exist. In a recently published decision, the Administrative Court in Munich merely decided that the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution may not use any intelligence resources to monitor the AfD until further notice.
In addition, the state office was temporarily prohibited from “conducting public relations work with regard to possible anti-constitutional efforts by the party”. However, it is still possible to observe the AfD – as a party as a whole – on the basis of openly accessible information: the administrative court ruled that the AfD must accept being observed at least from publicly accessible sources for the time being.
In addition, it was only a so-called interim decision of the administrative court. A decision in the urgent procedure is still pending, the time for this is open.
