German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government on Tuesday removed domestic spy chief Hans-Georg Maassen from office, transferring him to a different post to end an explosive row over immigration and the far right that once more rocked her fragile coalition.
“Mr Maassen will become state secretary in the interior ministry,” Merkel and the leaders of her coalition parties announced in a statement after crisis talks.
The face-saving compromise lets Merkel’s fourth-term government live another day, after her Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) coalition partners had insisted on Maassen’s departure, against the wishes of German Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer from her Bavarian CSU sister party.
Maassen, 55, became the center of a heated controversy after he raised doubts about the veracity of reports of far-right hooligans and neo-Nazis randomly attacking immigrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz late last month.
In his senior new role, essentially a promotion, Maassen would not be responsible for overseeing the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) intelligence service, the party leaders said in their statement.
It was not immediately clear who would replace Maassen as head of the BfV.
The far-right attacks in Chemnitz, which caused revulsion in Germany, were triggered by the fatal stabbing of a German man over which police are holding a Syrian suspect and searching for an Iraqi man.
A court on Tuesday freed another initial Iraqi suspect.
Days after the unrest, Maassen questioned the authenticity of amateur video footage showing street violence and voiced doubt that racists had “hunted down” foreigners — comments that directly contradicted Merkel, who had deplored the xenophobic attacks and “hatred in the streets.”
SPD leaders — as well as the opposition Greens, Free Democrats and Die Linke parties — had demanded the resignation or sacking of the spy chief for political meddling and pointed to his repeated meetings with leaders of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Leading opposition figures were scathing about the government’s response to the Maassen dilemma.
“That he has in practice been promoted and that the SPD supports this is a farce,” said Dietmar Bartsch, the parliamentary head of the far-left Die Linke.
The Greens coleader, Katrin Goering-Eckardt, tweeted that anyone who rewarded instead of punished Maassen for “cosying up to the AfD” had “lost all sense of decency.”
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