A 24-year-old Syrian man was sentenced to nine
and a half years in jail Thursday for a knife killing that sparked racist
street violence and far-right protests in the eastern German city of Chemnitz.
A 24-year-old Syrian man is expected to face a
court verdict Thursday over a knife killing that sparked far-right street
violence and protests in the eastern German city of Chemnitz.
For a spymaster, Hans-Georg Maaßen seemed unusually receptive to the media - while secret agents typically work in the shadows, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency gave more interviews than any of this predecessors.
The German government said Tuesday it was relieving controversial spy chief Hans-Georg Maaßen of his duties and moving him to a different post, defusing a row that had rocked Chancellor Angela Merkel's fragile coalition.
It only seems like yesterday that Angela Merkel managed to drag herself out of the last political crisis that threatened her coalition. Now there is renewed talk of a split at the top of German politics.
Secret services typically work away from the limelight, but Germany's top domestic spy Hans-Georg Maaßen has repeatedly crashed into the public eye, with his latest outing pitting him directly against Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has not found concrete evidence that a video showing a manhunt of foreigners in Chemnitz was falsified, as he originally claimed, according to German media reports.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden could have been acting under the influence of the Russian government, the heads of Germany's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies said on Friday.
UPDATE: Germany's domestic spy agency named not just bloggers, but also lawmakers in a criminal complaint that sparked a controversial treason investigation, news weekly Der Spiegel said on Friday.
Federal Security Service chief Hans-Georg Maaßen has warned Germany could see confrontations between Salafists and people drawn to right-wing, xenophobic politics.
