German Intelligence Watching Far-Left Politicians

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German Intelligence Watching Far-Left Politicians

January 24th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Der Spiegel
23 Jan, 2012

Germany’s opposition far-left Left Party is under more intense surveillance from domestic intelligence than previously thought, SPIEGEL has learned. Information from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) reveals that 27 Left Party parliamentarians are being observed — more than one-third of the party’s 76-strong parliamentary group.

Another 11 members of state parliaments around the country are also being watched, SPIEGEL has learned. The agency has declined to release the politicians’ names, as it would “run counter to the operative aims of the observation.”

Concern about the Left Party’s democratic pedigree is not new. The party formed in 2007 when a successor party to the East German communist party joined a leftist group from Western Germany. There have been numerous reports since then of party figures who were affiliated with the East German secret police, the Stasi, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The BfV is reportedly watching not just radical party members, but also a number of more moderate members, including almost all of the Left Party’s leading figures in parliament. Among the targets are leader Gregor Gysi, deputy chairwoman Sahra Wagenknecht, and members of the party’s parliamentary committee Dietmar Bartsch and Jan Korte.

But it’s the inclusion of Steffen Bockhahn, a member of the parliamentary committee that oversees the country’s intelligence agencies’ budgets, that is raising eyebrows. His surveillance is particularly sensitive because in December 2011, the parliamentary research service determined that “because of the special job description of the committee … only very extraordinary circumstances could justify the surveillance of a member.”