Nationwide police action against posting of online hate comments in Germany

Fighting against hate comments on the internet, German police were deployed in more than a dozen federal states on Thursday, according to the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).

In 38 individual cases, apartments had been searched and suspects were questioned, the German criminal office announced.

Those are accused of having posted hate comments on the internet "such as public calls to commit crimes, insults to public officials or anti-Semitic insults" which are illegal under German law and can be sentenced to up to five years in prison.

According to the BKA, 77 percent of cases were from the right-wing extremist spectrum while only 9 percent of the comments were from left-wing extremist.

The remaining 14 percent would be classified as "foreign or religious ideologies" or could not be assigned to any political motivation, the BKA announced.

This week, the violent death of Kassel's district president Walter Luebcke who was strongly supporting refugees had triggered questionable comments in the social networks by right-wing circles.

"This is simply cynical, tasteless, horrible, repugnant in every way," German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier commented on the online responses by those who enjoyed and downright applauded Luebcke death.

Facebook vowed not to tolerate such content and told German public broadcaster ZDF, that "comments glorifying this act of violence have no place on Facebook. When we become aware of such content, we remove it."

Defaming deceased people in Germany with strong language and malice is against law and can lead to a sentence of up to two years in prison.