German police on Wednesday launch nationwide raids targeting social media users who posted racial hatred on Facebook and other online networks.
Police swoop down on the homes of some 60 suspects across 14 of Germany’s 16 states, the BKA federal crime bureau says, in a crackdown on “verbal radicalism” and related criminal offenses.
No arrests are made but computer equipment, cameras and smartphones were seized in the first-ever such mass raids targeting online hate crime.
Most of the suspects allegedly belong to a neo-Nazi Facebook group whose users have posted xenophobic, anti-Semitic or other far-right messages.
BKA chief Holger Muench says police are taking a “clear stance against hate and incitement on the internet,” which has increased amid the refugee crisis and is poisoning public discourse.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere says that “violence, including verbal violence, in any form and in any context” is “unacceptable.”
He says there are “moral principles offline and online” and stresses that “criminal law applies on the internet.”
— AFP
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