... a cosy relationship between senior NPD members and intelligence officials ... the party was led by government agents.

Tuesday, February 12, 2002

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Germany's anti-Nazi campaign in disarray

By Hannah Cleaver
in Berlin

A CAMPAIGN led by the German government to ban a neo-Nazi party was in disarray yesterday. Five senior members of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) have been government informers for decades, it was disclosed.

The revelation suggests a cosy relationship between senior NPD members and intelligence officials and that the party was led by government agents. The Interior Ministry was forced to admit that information provided by at least five neo-Nazi informers, known as V-men, was used in the application for the NPD to be banned by the constitutional court.

The court in Berlin announced yesterday that it would be at least several weeks before it would respond to the government's request for a ban, which is not expected to be enforced at least until after the general election this autumn. Wolfgang Frenz, 66, the vice-leader of the NPD's vital North Rhine-Westphalia region, was paid up to £260 a month by the intelligence services between 1962 and 1995.

Mr Frenz, an alternative health practitioner and co-founder of the party, had a relationship with the intelligence services he described as "particularly intensive" in the 1970s and '80s. Udo Holtmann, 64, Mr Frenz's superior and the editor and publisher of the party's newspaper, was paid by the government for 24 years and is said to have told his party colleagues about his informer status, acting as a double agent.

Another V-man, Tino Brandt, 27, was named as a prolific source of information for the Thuringen state intelligence services. The others named were Mattias Meier and Mike Layer, party officials who supplied intelligence to the government as recently as the late 1990s.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the interior minister, Otto Schily, have been put under pressure by the disclosures. Although all parties want to see the NPD banned from German political life, Mr Schroder's Social Democrat and Green coalition government has lost the support of the opposition parties over the ban, including the main opposition Christian Democrat Union.

The NPD is alleged to be anti-constitutional, racist and anti-democratic - characteristics which if proved, could lead to it being banned by the constitutional court. While it remains a legal party, neo-Nazis can march through Berlin in protests protected by the police.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.

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