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In the past year, politically motivated crime reached its highest level since 2001.

This is reported by the “Tagesspiegel”, citing a response from the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a request from the Greens.

Accordingly, the police registered a total of 44,034 crimes by right-wing extremists, left-wing extremists, Reich citizens, Islamists and other fanatics.

In 2001 the police introduced the “Politically Motivated Crime (PMK)” recording system.

The current number exceeds the overall balance of 2019 by almost 3,000 crimes and is even more than twice as high as in 2002, 2003 and 2004. In 3354 acts of violence, eleven people were killed and a further 1367 injured, including 26 children and 77 young people.

The information can be found in the response of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to an extensive request from the Greens MP Irene Mihalic and her parliamentary group on politically motivated crime.

All case numbers are preliminary and can increase due to late registrations.

The numbers represented a "sad and worrying record," said Mihalic, domestic political spokeswoman for the group.

23,403 right-wing offenses

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The police attribute most of the politically motivated crimes of the past year to the spectrum of neo-Nazis and other right-wing groups.

The ministry reports 23,403 crimes to "PMK-rechts".

That is over 1000 offenses more than in 2019, the second-highest level since 2001.

Militant right-wing extremists committed 1,071 violent crimes.

In February 2020, nine people from immigrant families died in the racist attack in Hanau.

Further violent right-wing attacks injured 625 people, including 25 children and 59 young people.

Left-motivated perpetrators committed the most acts of violence in 2020.

The police reported bodily harm, arson and other offenses in 1570.

That means an increase of 518 acts and thus around 50 percent compared to 2019. 484 people were injured in the attacks.

At 10,961, the number of all left-motivated crimes is also the highest since 2001 and even exceeds 2017 with the serious riots at the G20 summit in Hamburg.

See the WELT video documentation here

Anti-Semitic crime peaked

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The highest level of anti-Semitic crimes since 2001 also contributed to the bitter record in the overall record of politically motivated crime.

Last year the police found a total of 2,322 offenses hostile to Jews, including 56 acts of violence.

The police attribute almost all offenses, 2204 to be precise, to right-wing perpetrators.

The Greens MP Mihalic emphasized that “the fact that we will record more anti-Semitic crimes in 2020 than ever before must be an urgent wake-up call to the federal government and the security authorities.

Jews must be able to feel safe in Germany.

For this, every form of anti-Semitism must be fought. "

1014 crimes were classified as "Islamophobic", of which 935 were attributed to right-wing perpetrators.

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In addition, there is a considerable increase in politically motivated crimes that the police do not assign to any ideological spectrum.

That applies to many crimes by corona deniers, it was said in security circles.

The number of these “other” offenses rose by more than 1,500 to 8,214 in 2020. This is also the highest value since 2001.

Two deaths from "religious ideology"

458 crimes were assigned to the area of ​​"religious ideology".

There were two fatalities.

In May an Afghan murdered his wife in Cottbus because she wanted to dress in western clothes.

In October, gay tourists in Dresden were attacked by a Syrian with a knife, and one died.

In almost a thousand offenses, the perpetrators were, according to the police, from one

"Foreign ideology" motivates.

Often it was about conflicts between Kurdish supporters of the PKK terrorist organization and nationalist Turks.