Twenty current and former members of the Frankfurt police are suspected of having broadcast neo-Nazi propaganda on discussion groups, the prosecution said on Wednesday. The investigations had started against a police officer suspected of possession and dissemination of images of a pedophile nature. The investigators then discovered these discussion groups.

Twenty current and former members of the Frankfurt police are suspected of having broadcast neo-Nazi propaganda on discussion groups, the prosecution said on Wednesday.

The police raided the homes of six of these police officers on Wednesday, members of the special actions command of the Frankfurt police, said in a statement the prosecution, which opened an investigation in April.

The investigations had started against a 38-year-old police officer, suspected of possession and dissemination of images of a pedophile nature.

Suspensions and suspicions of obstruction of justice

By analyzing his cell phones, investigators gained access to discussion groups of police officers exchanging neo-Nazi propaganda.

In total, 19 members of the Frankfurt special action group, and a former police officer, are targeted by the investigation on these discussion forums, active between 2016 and 2019. Three of them are also suspected of obstructing the justice.

Superiors of the 17 other suspects, they did not denounce their alleged actions, as they are nevertheless obliged to do.

The 19 police officers still on duty were suspended pending a possible trial.

Already several scandals of this type in Germany

Several scandals of this type have rocked the German police in recent months, as well as the army.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous region of Germany, around thirty police officers, suspended since, exchanged on Whatsapp messaging photos of Adolf Hitler and swastikas, as well as flags of the Third Reich and a montage showing a refugee in a gas chamber in a concentration camp.

A similar group was dismantled at the end of September 2020 in Berlin.

Hesse had also experienced a similar case in the summer of 2020: a computer of the state-region police had been used to find private data on people who had subsequently been the subject of death threats.

The porosity between the extreme right and part of the police is proven. The Alternative for Germany party (AfD) is thus the group in the Bundestag which has the most police officers in its ranks: 5 out of 89.