Munich (dpa / lby) - Bavaria's central office for combating extremism and terrorism had to deal with significantly more anti-Semitic crimes in the past year than before. "The number of procedures involving anti-Semitic crimes has risen from 68 in 2021 to 104 in 2022 and has reached an alarming level," said Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich (CSU) in Munich on Wednesday. At the same time, there was a significant drop in Islamism in 2022 - from 130 to 67 procedures.
Overall, the central office (ZET) completed 497 investigations last year - that was a new high. "In total, ZET has conducted more than 3,000 proceedings since it was founded six years ago," said Eisenreich.
As an example of successful proceedings, Eisenreich cites the strike against the banned association "Blood
Thanks to the ZET, a Munich arms supplier could also be arrested and sentenced, who had sold war weapons imported from Croatia to right-wing extremists, so-called Reich citizens and rockers. The office also dealt with the case against a young man who attacked other passengers in an ICE with a knife in November 2021. ZET was able to prove an Islamist motivation for the ICE attacker.
The central office conducts particularly prominent criminal proceedings in the areas of extremism and terrorism. It works closely with the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office and other specialized police agencies. At the same time, the ZET is the central interface between the judiciary in the Free State and the Attorney General and the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Since it was founded, the number of investigators has doubled from five to ten. There are currently seven male and three male prosecutors.
