Agency Report –
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has filed a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court over its classification as a suspected right-wing extremist group by domestic intelligence, party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla said on Thursday.
The legal dispute with the the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been ongoing for more than three years and has already gone through several instances.
The anti-immigrant AfD, Germany’s largest opposition group, has been under observation by the domestic intelligence agency for several years on suspicion of anti-constitutional activities.
It filed a lawsuit against the classification, but the case was rejected by the higher administrative court in the western city of Münster.
According to the ruling, the intelligence agency is entitled to classify the party as a suspected extremist organization and can therefore monitor it using certain surveillance methods.
The AfD’s complaint against the decision was rejected by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig a few weeks ago. Thursday’s Constitutional Court appeal is the next step being taken by the AfD.
Weidel and Chrupalla said the AfD would use all means available in a constitutional state to protect it and the party’s members “from these baseless state insults” by the domestic intelligence agency.
The intelligence agency subsequently upgraded its classification of the AfD as a “confirmed” case of right-wing extremism in May, but the use of the term – which would grant the agency further surveillance powers – was put on hold after a separate lawsuit by the AfD.
