AfD politicians have defended their top EU candidate Maimilian Krah in the Bundestag in the affair surrounding espionage allegations. Krah is “unreachable” for the AfD’s political opponents, said MP Stefan Keuter in a current hour on Thursday. There is no “court-proof evidence” of wrongdoing.
The deputy FDP parliamentary group leader, Konstantin Kuhle, accused the AfD of “currying favor with autocratic regimes”. In the party, it is not the co-chairs Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla who are in charge, but rather the chairman of the Thuringian regional association, which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified as right-wing extremist, Björn Höcke, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Monday evening, an employee of MEP Krah was arrested on suspicion of spying for China. He is said to have passed on information from the European Parliament and spied on Chinese opposition members in Germany. Behind Krah, Bundestag member Petr Bystron is in second place on the list of candidates. Both have been facing allegations and reports for weeks of being involved in pro-Russian propaganda channels and of possibly having accepted money in this context. Both reject this.
Krah and Bystron were at the top of the AfD candidate list for the European elections on June 9th “not despite, but because of their proximity to the dictatorship,” said Green Party deputy Konstantin von Notz. Germany is currently the focus of foreign intelligence services and is experiencing “hybrid attacks in a whole new dimension,” said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). The deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, Dirk Wiese, referred to a video by Krah on China’s Tibet policy and said: “Celebrating human rights oppression, sending sensitive information to Beijing – that is the AfD in Germany in 2024.”
The Bundestag put the current hour on the topic of “Russia, China and the AfD” on the agenda at the request of the traffic light factions.
dpa
