Daily Times

The party of Germany’s former Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), wants to kick out the ex-president of the domestic intelligence agency (BfV), Hans-Georg Maassen. The CDU Federal Executive Committee has unanimously decided to initiate proceedings to expel him from the party, CDU Chairman Friedrich Merz said Monday in Berlin. In addition, Maassen’s membership rights had been revoked “with immediate effect.” The CDU accuses him of being close to right-wing extremism, conspiracy theories and using “language from the milieu of anti-Semites.” Maassen, who was president of the BfV from 2012 to 2018, had sparked criticism with various statements. On Twitter, for example, he declared in January that the thrust of the “driving forces in the political-media sphere” was “eliminatory racism against whites.” He also spoke of a “racial doctrine” of the left-wing parties the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens. Maassen has also been repeatedly accused by the opposition of failing to come to terms with the murders of the neo-Nazi group NSU. Above all, the role of informants has not been clearly clarified to date.