The head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency said Sunday that there was enough evidence to ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) that the government blames as the motivator of a rising number of hate crimes.
"Our material is not thin," Heinz Fromm, head of the agency for the protection of the constitution, the Verfassungsschutz, told the Sunday newspaper Welt Sonntag.
Fromm was answering criticism from opposition conservatives that the government's decision last week to ask Germany's highest tribunal, the Constitutional Court, to outlaw the NPD was an empty political gesture lacking concrete proof that the party is involved in the extremist attacks.
"We can prove that the NPD is hostile to the constitution and seeks to pursue its goals in aggressive, militant ways," Fromm said.
He said the NPD, a politically insignificant party with only 6,200 members and no seats in either national or state legislatures, had brought right-wing extremists under its umbrella.
He added that statements of NPD leaders made clear their opposition to parliamentary democracy in Germany.
"There are even statements that threaten representatives of the current (government) system with retribution that extends to liquidation," he said -- BERLIN (AFP)
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