Walter Lübcke murder raises specter of neo-Nazi terrorism

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A suspected neo-Nazi's arrest in the German politician's murder case has focused concerns on far-right terrorism. A member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party, he supported her pro-migration stance. Germany's federal prosecutors have taken over the investigation into the murder of Walter Lübcke, indicating that the killing of the Kassel district president on June 2 is being treated as a politically motivated terrorist act. If indeed the murder is shown to have been politically motivated, it would be the first such assassination on a sitting German politician since the 1970s. [RAF terrorists]

A number of German outlets have reported details of the alleged far-right ties of the suspect arrested in the central city of Kassel in the early hours of Sunday morning. The German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Monday that the 45-year-old man, named only as Stephan E., had a long criminal record, had already issued death threats via his YouTube channel, and that weapons were found during the search of his home. According to the paper, Stephan E. had written a comment on YouTube in 2018 under his alias Game Over that read "Either this government abdicates soon or there will be deaths." [...]

Stephan E. is also believed to have been sentenced to six years in prison for an attempted bomb attack on a refugee home in 1995. He was also reported to have taken part in an attack on a trade union demonstration in 2009. [...]

The implication of Sunday's arrest, coincidentally made on the third anniversary of the killing of British MP Jo Cox by a far-right extremist in the UK, is that the Lübcke case would mark the first time in decades that an active politician was killed by a terrorist in Germany. The manner of the killing - a close-range shot to the head - also recalled the series of killings by the only neo-Nazi terrorist group that has so far been discovered and investigated by German security forces: the National Socialist Underground (NSU). Over a seven-year period, the NSU carried out nine murders of people with immigrant backgrounds, using a single Ceska handgun. The last two murders happened over a three-day period in Dortmund and Kassel in April 2006.

source: Article 'Walter Lübcke murder raises specter of neo-Nazi terrorism' by Ben Knight; www.dw.com/en/walter-l%C3%BCbcke-murder-raises-specter-of-neo-nazi-terrorism/a-49238157; DW; 17 June 2019