At around 1 am, a witness informed the police that several vehicles were in flames in a courtyard. The fire brigade was able to extinguish the fires, and nobody was injured. However, the flames also caused material damage to a building.
Since the vehicles displayed AfD advertising, the police assume that they were targeted and set on fire. Investigations were immediately launched, according to the officials, but so far without success.
The deputy chairman of the AFD parliamentary group in the Dusseldorf state parliament, Sven Tritschler, called on Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) to start fighting “left terror consistently” and to ensure the fundamental rights of AfD politicians.
The case is not the first arson attack on AfD politicians’ vehicles. Left-wing extremists regularly attack cars and homes by AFD officials. Among the victims in the past were both simple AfD members and leaders of the party.
An AfD delegation meanwhile visited the Crimean Peninsula. “This is a deliberate provocation of Ukraine and Germany’s parliament,” a German Deutsche Welle reported Jens Thurau, complained.
“They have always been united in their dislike or even downright hatred of democracy, the rule of law and understanding between peoples. And most recently, of Western democracy,” according to Thurau.
In previous years, the AfD attended the annual economic conference being held on the Crimean Peninsula — though officially, on private business.
“Moreover, the AfD has for a while been openly and successfully courting Russian-born Germans,” Thurau added.
“Russian and German extremists are united in their loathing of globalization, societal progress, and of recognizing and protecting minorities. They hate the European Union and welcome Brexit as the beginning of the end of the despised bloc, claim climate change is an invention by brainwashed scientists, and dismiss the media as purveyors of lies.”
Thurau urged voters in Western democracies to “stay calm” in the face of mounting dissidence.