Secret meeting in Potsdam: AfD employee boasts of violence

2024-01-17 21:01:05

Essen/Berlin (ots) – One of the participants in the secret meeting was Mario Müller, who had a previous conviction for bodily harm, a long-time leading figure in the Identitarian Movement and an employee in an AfD Bundestag office. At the meeting, Müller claimed to be partly responsible for another violent attack – which might be relevant with a view to a possible AfD ban procedure. When asked, he denied involvement in the incident.

At the secret meeting between AfD politicians, neo-Nazis and private supporters in November 2023, Mario Müller, who had a previous conviction for assault, boasted that he was partly responsible for a violent attack and that he was running a political search platform. Müller works in the office of AfD member of the Bundestag Jan Wenzel Schmidt. According to CORRECTIV sources, he said at the meeting that he had made public the whereregardings of a potential key witness in the right-wing milieu and had hired a gang of thugs to target him.

When asked by CORRECTIV, he denied involvement in the attack: “I never set up a ‘thug squad’ on anyone,” he said. He only exchanged information regarding the man’s whereregardings “with Polish journalists” and then found out regarding the attack “from the Internet.”

His statements in the lecture contradict this: Müller claimed to his listeners that he had found out the whereregardings of the Antifa activist in November 2021 and passed it on to “Polish experience-oriented football circles” – i.e. hooligans. They in turn confronted the man on the street “very physically and sportily”, whereupon the victim suffered a nervous breakdown. This is today’s key witness in the trial once morest Lina E., who was convicted in the first instance of left-wing extremist violence.

According to the editorial sources, in his remarks to the audience in the Adlon country house near Potsdam, Müller also made it clear that he saw not only Antifa as an enemy, but also politicians, left-wing civil society and journalists, among others. Through his position in the Bundestag office, he has access to confidential information that he, as an “extreme right-wing violent criminal,” might use “to pursue his political agenda,” fears Thuringian state parliament member Katharina König-Preuss (Left).

Confronted with the allegations, Müller writes that he rejects violence “out of conviction” and writes: “I do not pose a risk to anyone in the German Bundestag or elsewhere.” As a research assistant, he works exclusively on mandate-related work and public relations work.

According to the research, Müller also boasted at the meeting that he was behind a high-reach account on the short message service X: “Documentation of left-wing extremism.” The account spreads details regarding left-wing actors, politicians and journalists with real names, photos and other information in order to put them in the focus of the right-wing scene. When asked regarding this, he flatly denied involvement in the account without providing any further information.

Müller’s claims in the lecture in Potsdam might be relevant with a view to a possible AfD ban procedure. Because: If such a procedure were actually to take place, the Federal Constitutional Court would not only have to assess whether the AfD represents an anti-constitutional stance at the federal level. But also whether she tries to implement this attitude in an aggressive, combative manner.

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