Gang preparing jailed neo-Nazis for violence on release is raided

NATIONWIDE swoops on a neo-Nazi group that has infiltrated jailed right-wingers to prepare them for violence when back on the outside took place across Germany yesterday.

• Thilio Sarrazin Picture: Getty

The targets of the raid were offices and homes of the officials of the Aid Organisation for National Political Prisoners and their Dependants. The HNG, as it is known, is believed to have begun organising violent neo-Nazis serving jail terms for hate crimes, assault and possession of illegal weapons.

Interior Ministry Secretary Klaus-Dieter Fritsche said: "Today's searches will show whether our suspicions are confirmed and the HNG is positioned against constitutional order in an aggressively violent manner.

"Our findings lead us to the belief the HNG's goal is to network and strengthen the fragmented neo-Nazi scene.

"It acts against the social cohesion of Germany and we cannot tolerate this."

The HNG was founded in 1979 and has a core membership of around 600 with triple that number regarded as sympathisers. The interior ministry lists the group's principle activity as supporting neo-Nazis in jail.

A ministry official said of their activities: "This is not with a view to a re-socialisation of offenders and their reintegration into society but around solidifying their National Socialist convictions and encouraging them to be motivated to commit further offences upon their release."

Yesterday's raids - which involved several hundred police officers across four states and in Berlin - are one of the clearest signals in recent months of the dangers that Germany feels it still faces from a resurgent Nazi movement that commits numerous offences each year.

With the furore surrounding Bundesbank member Thilo Sarrazin's latest book, in which he writes of Muslims "dumbing down" Germany, schools, youth clubs and even kindergartens are now being targeted by a re-energised radical right taking advantage of disaffected youth in the recession.

One state is so worried it has ordered kindergarten staff to pledge allegiance to democracy before they are hired.

Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania, in the east of the country, now requires anyone setting up children's day-care centres to pledge their support for the nation's constitution following a number of incidents where ultra-nationalists tried to take over such institutions to influence children into ultra-right-wing thinking.

Heike Radvan, an educational scientist with a Berlin-based anti-racism group, said: "Within the far-right scene there appears to be a more or less clear strategy to encourage young women to train for teaching and social work jobs because that offers an opportunity to spread nationalist ideology."

Meanwhile, an editorial in the German Voice, the newspaper of the far-right NPD party, encouraged members to go into teaching to promote "nationalist education" for youngsters.

Earlier this year activists from the "Show your Face" campaign - an anti-Nazi movement - demanded a national effort to curb rising far-right crime, saying government plans to cut funding would only serve to worsen neo-Nazi problems.

In 2001, some 10,054 recorded hate crimes were committed by German neo-Nazis. In 2008, the number was 20,422. In addition, 149 people have been killed by neo-Nazis over the past 20 years.