German state's surveillance action against far-right AfD stepped up

BERLIN: Germany's domestic intelligence agency is actively monitoring a regional branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), a security source said on Tuesday, as a possible prelude to placing the party under surveillance nationally.

The source said the agency had classified the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, the eastern state where it is the biggest opposition party, as a "suspicious entity" representing a potential threat to the democratic order.

That designation, by the regional branch of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), gives agents more powers for surveillance, including tapping the party's communications - potentially dealing its fortunes a blow in a busy election year.

Germany holds regional elections in June and a federal one in September and, after a two-year investigation, the BfV is also expected to decide in the near future whether to place the party on the same surveillance footing at national level.

The classification would not prevent the party, the third biggest in the Bundestag lower house of parliament and the official opposition, from contesting either ballot.

Saxony-Anhalt Greens lawmaker Sebastian Striegel said he did not expect the decision to hit the AfD's election chances in its heartlands in Germany's former Communist East.

"People voted for the AfD because of their far-right character before, and they will continue to do so," he told Reuters.

One prominent AfD lawmaker has criticized Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and another dismissed the Hitler era as "just bird shit in more than 1,000 years of successful German history".

The party gained voters nationally in a reaction to the open-door policy on migration that Chancellor Angela Merkel adopted in 2015, but it slipped back to around 10% support during the coronavirus pandemic.

The domestic intelligence agency had previously placed a radical branch of the party, called Der Fluegel, or The Wing, under surveillance.