HANOVER: Two women re-appointed to the leadership of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a party congress on Sunday took aim at Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying that the end of her time in office was near.
Beatrix von Storch, an AfD lawmaker from the northern city of Luebeck, said Merkel’s decision to admit hundreds of thousands of migrants to the country in 2015 and 2016 made her the “biggest lawbreaker in Germany’s post-war history.”
The AfD, which concluded its two-day party congress in Hanover on Sunday, has undergone a further shift to the right by appointing two members of its nationalist wing — Alexander Gauland and Joerg Meuthen — as co-chairs.
Both espouse the strict anti-immigration views that propelled the party to a nearly 13-per-cent vote share in the September election that granted it over 90 seats in the Bundestag.
“Islam belongs in Germany like Merkel belongs in the chancellery,” said von Storch, who was voted back into the AfD’s leadership team with 55.2 per cent of the delegates’ votes.
Alice Weidel, who heads the AfD’s parliamentary group, said that “the twilight of Merkel’s career is upon us — that was us.” She was referring to the fact that many former supporters of Merkel’s conservatives soured on her leadership during the refugee crisis.
Suspicious package
Meanwhile, a suspicious package found near a Christmas market in the German city of Potsdam on Friday was not terrorism-related, but part of an attempt to blackmail delivery company DHL, an official said on Sunday.
Karl-Heinz Schroeter — the interior minister of Brandenburg, where Potsdam is located — said that a suspect had asked DHL, the parcel delivery division of the German logistics company Deutsche Post, for a large sum of money.
The package found in Potsdam on Friday contained materials to create a bomb, including about 100 nails, an unidentified powdered substance, and a metal cylinder.
A similar package was delivered some time ago in the eastern city of Frankfurt an der Oder, the minister said.
Brandenburg police chief Hans-Juergen Moerke said that further deliveries of a similar nature are possible and perhaps even probable.
— dpa
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