The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg has classified the AfD as a suspicious object. This was announced by Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) on Thursday in Stuttgart when presenting the report for the protection of the constitution for 2021. The secret service in Baden-Württemberg is thus following the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. So far, only the AfD youth organization Junge Alternative and the right-wing national “wing” of the party have been observed by the intelligence service in the south-west.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel announced legal steps. “The classification of the AfD Baden-Württemberg as an object of observation is completely unjustified and a purely arbitrary act,” said Weidel, who is also the AfD state chairman in Baden-Württemberg, on Thursday of the dpa. “The AfD, as an opposition party critical of the government, should obviously be silenced. As democrats, we will not put up with that and will take legal and political action against it, as we do at the federal level.”

The state associations of the AfD are judged differently by the respective state authorities. For example, the Thuringian AfD is observed as a secured right-wing extremist effort. The AfD as a whole party is classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected case in the area of ​​right-wing extremism.

In March, the Cologne administrative court decided on a lawsuit by the AfD against this classification in favor of the protection of the constitution. The court argued that there were sufficient indications of anti-constitutional efforts within the party. The AfD has appealed to the Higher Administrative Court in Münster.

“Suspected case” is a working category of the constitution protection authorities, which can have a different meaning depending on the federal state. The Southwest authority sees “sufficiently weighty factual evidence” for anti-constitutional efforts in the AfD Baden-Württemberg.

In such cases, under strict conditions, the domestic intelligence service can observe members or recruit other intelligence resources or informants. The aim is to find out whether the suspicion can be substantiated and whether the group can be classified as proven extremist.