BERLIN — Germany’s far-right party Alternative for Germany on Wednesday banned its top candidate for next month’s European elections from making further campaign appearances and said he would immediately resign from the party’s board of directors.
The public demotion came after Maximilian Krah told an Italian newspaper that not all members of the Nazis’ elite SS unit, which was involved in major war crimes during World War II, were war criminals. .
Krah, 47, had already been under scrutiny after authorities in Brussels searched his offices in the European Parliament in connection with one of his aides who was arrested last month on suspicion of spying for China.
German media have alleged that Krah had ties to China and also Russia.
The scandals involving Krah come at the most inconvenient time for the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, just weeks before the party hopes to make big gains in the European elections. He had been at the top of the polls last year, but has become less popular this year after millions of Germans protested his radical far-right stance.
In addition to Krah, the no. The No. 2 on the AfD list for the European Parliament elections, Petr Bystron, last month separately denied allegations published in a Czech newspaper that he may have received money from a pro-Russian network.
The top leadership of the AfD party said in a statement after an emergency meeting to discuss Krah’s recent errors that there had been “massive damage to the party in the current election campaign, for which the leading candidate had provided the pretext.”
He said Krah took full responsibility and will resign from his position on the federal executive board with immediate effect. It was not immediately clear whether he was still running for the European Parliament.
The party’s latest crisis was sparked by an interview Krah gave last week to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, in which he said: “I will never say that someone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal,” the news agency reported. german dpa.
When asked if the SS were war criminals, he replied: “There was certainly a high percentage of criminals, but not all of them were criminals.”
In reaction to that interview, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, of the National Rally party, indicated that Krah had crossed a red line. Until now, the National Assembly (RN) had been working together with the AfD in the European Parliament, but now the French far-right is considering ending its cooperation with the AfD at the European level, dpa reported.
RN party leader Jordan Bardella said on TF1 that “I think the AfD, with whom we have worked together in the European Parliament for five years, has crossed lines that for me are red lines,” dpa reported.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
