German police officer suspected of sending extremist messages

The Frankfurt public prosecutor's office has opened investigations into a police officer suspected of having sent pictures with right-wing extremist content in a WhatsApp chat, a spokesperson for the office said on Thursday.

According to hessenschau.de, which had first reported on the case, the suspect was a service group leader in the Muehlheim police force.

The officer is accused of the "use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations," the hessenschau reported. It also published screenshots, supposedly sent by the police officer, of photos containing right-wing extremist images.

One photo, entitled "German Christmas greeting," depicted an iron cross decorated with fir branches with the flag of the German Empire visible in the background.

Another picture, which the Muehlheim police service group leader supposedly sent to colleagues in December 2016, showed swastika-shaped Christmas cookies.

The public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt has been investigating the service group leader since January and confirmed that the investigations were "close to completion."

The right-wing activities at the Hessian police force had increasingly come into the focus of the investigating authorities since it became known in December that Frankfurt-based lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz had received right-wing extremist threats by fax.

During the investigations, it came to light that personal data about the lawyer, such as her private contact details, had most likely been retrieved from a service computer at a police station in Frankfurt, according to the public prosecutor.

A 30-year-old police officer was arrested at the end of June and was suspected of having sent the threatening faxes, the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau reported.

In another incident back in December, five Frankfurt police officers were investigated on suspicion of exchanging right-wing extremist ideas and xenophobic content for several weeks.