The district court of Leipzig has ordered warrants for the arrest of four far-left extremists accused of assaulting police officers and engaging in bodily harm on New Year’s Eve.
The four extremists, aged 27, 29, 30 and 32-years-old, were taken before a judge earlier this week after being arrested in connection with violent riots in the Connewitzer Kreuz area, a noted far-left stronghold in the city, German tabloid Bild reports.
The main arrest warrant was issued against a 27-year-old extremist who is accused of assaulting several law enforcement officials and the other three are being held in custody because none of them has fixed addresses and police say they could flee the area.
The State Criminal Police Office (LKA) and its specialized far-left extremism division (LinX) say they are still investigating the serious assault on a police officer by an unknown individual. It is being treated as an attempted murder case.
The 38-year-old officer who was the victim in the attack was forced to undergo surgery at a local hospital on New Year’s Eve. Police described the operation as being an emergency, but some hospital staff have countered the claim, stating that the surgery was on the officer’s ear and was not life-threatening.
Leipzig police chief Torsten Schultze told the tabloid he thought the semantic debate of whether the operation was an emergency or not was “disgraceful.”
“An official was seriously injured and had to be operated on. That’s bad enough,” he said.
Leipzig has become a hub of far-left Antifa extremism in recent months with the city seeing a total of 357 attacks in 2019. One, an arson attack, caused over ten million euros’ worth of damages.
German Police Union (DPolG) federal chairman Rainer Wendt commented on the rise in violence, saying that a group similar to the terrorist Red Army Faction (RAF) — who were notorious for bombings and targeted killings — could emerge in the near future.
“Left-wing Internet blogs and alternative media sites, in particular, are making no secret of their desire to violently resist the political system,” he said.