The Guardian - 31.08.2019

Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •

World^39

Berlin murder

suspect linked

to Russian

security service

Salvini tells supporters to march on

Rome after election move backfi res

Angela Giuff rida
Rome

Matteo Salvini called on his supporters
yesterday to descend on Rome after
his attempt to collapse the Italian gov-
ernment and force snap elections led
instead to his far-right League party
being sidelined from government.

Salvini earmarked 19 October for a

“peaceful day of Italian pride” against

a potential government made up of

his party’s former coalition partner,

the anti-establishment Five Star

Movement (M5S), and the centre-left

Democratic party (PD).

“From north to south, from the

silent majority ... a day of mobilisation

for those who don’t want a government

born overnight in Brussels,” he said in

an announcement on Facebook. “I’m

not angry because of my own personal

interests, I’m angry because a robbery

of democracy is under way.”

Salvini, who is still nominally the

interior minister, has accused Brussels

and Berlin of plotting to eject his party

from government, taking particular

aim at the European commissioner for

the EU budget, Günther Oettinger , who

said a M5S-PD tie-up was “great news”

for Italy and the EU. “But they won’t

get rid of the Salvini and League ball-

breakers so easily,” Salvini said.

Salvini has also planned a series of

rallies across Italy , while his far-right

ally, Brothers of Italy, has urged people

to take to the streets beforehand.

Ital y’s prime minister, Giuseppe

Conte, was given a fresh mandate

on Thursday to try to secure a pact

with M5S and the PD in an eff ort to

avoid early elections. He said now was

“a time for relaunch” and for Italy to

become a EU “protagonist” again.

Conte has until next week to ensure

the two sides set aside their diff erences

to create a lasting government. They

still need to draft a programme, pick a

cabinet and establish what role Luigi

Di Maio, the M5S leader, will play.

Senior AfD politician went

to neo-Nazi rally in Greece

Philip Oltermann
Berlin

A German politician seeking to become
the fi rst state premier for the rightwing
populist Alternative für Deutschland
in elections tomorrow took part in
a neo-Nazi rally in Athens in 2007,
leaked documents show.
Andreas Kalbitz , 46, is the AfD’s lead
candidate for Brandenburg, where
polls suggest the party is competing
with the centre-left Social Democratic
party (SPD) in the race to become the
state’s strongest political force.
A highly influential figure on
the AfD’s overtly nationalist wing,

Kalbitz’s infl uence in the party is likely

to increase following state polls in

Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia

this weekend. He has emphasised

his strict rejection of anti-democratic

ideas and organisations.

A report by the German embassy

in Athens, published by Der Spiegel ,

named Kalbitz as one of 14 German

neo -Nazis who travelled to the Greek

capital in January 2007 for a rally

organised by the Patriotic Alliance,

a short-lived ultranationalist party

formed by members of Golden Dawn

in Greece.

Among the other members of

the German delegation were lead-

ing fi gures in the NPD, founded as a

successor to the German Reich party,

including its leader, Udo Voigt.

The group drew the attention of the

local police and the German embassy

because they hung a fl ag bearing a

swastika from the balcony of a hotel

in Athens. The hotel was fi rebombed

that evening. The embassy believed

that the attack had been carried out

by members of the anarchist scene.

When approached with the informa-

tion by Der Spiegel, Kalbitz confi rmed

he had been in Athens in 2007 but said

he had not been present at the hotel

during the firebombing “and the

sequence of events connected to it”.

The Bavarian-born AfD politician

claimed to have been unenthusiastic

about the rally: “Assessing this event

retrospectively, it did not wake fur-

ther interest or approval on my behalf,

neither in its political goals nor the

selection of those participating.”

Polls this month showed the AfD as

the strongest party in Brandenburg,

the state that surrounds the capital,

Berlin, but more recent surveys give

a slight advantage to the SPD, which

has governed there since German

reunifi cation.

In neighbouring Saxony, the latest

polls show the AfD to be fl oundering

in the fi nal stretch of its campaign,

on track for second place on 24.5%,

behind the resurgent Christian Dem-

ocratic Union (CDU) on 32%.

Philip Oltermann

A suspect arrested last week over the

killing of a Chechen dissident in Ber-

lin was carrying a passport bearing a

number that linked him to Russian

security services, German media

reported yesterday.

Zelimkhan Khangoshvili , who

fought against Russia during the sec-

ond Chechen war in the early 2000s ,

was shot in the head at close range in

the Kleiner Tiergarten park last Friday.

A Russian who was detained near

the scene after being spotted throwing

a bicycle and a gun into the River Spree

was carrying visa documents that

identifi ed him as 49-year-old Vadim

Andreevich Sokolov , born in Irkutsk,

Siberia and based in St Petersburg.

However, no one with that name

could be found in Russia’s national

passport register, nor in its driving

licen ce register, Der Spiegel reported.

At a Paris hotel listed as a residence

in the visa documents, receptionists

could not recall having seen the man,

researchers for Der Spiegel found.

Instead, a joint investigation by the

German magazine and the research

platforms Bellingcat and The Insider

found the passport number could be

linked to a unit in Moscow’s interior

ministry that has issued ID documents

for the military security service GRU.

The fi ndings add fuel to suspicions

of a state-backed assassination similar

to the attempt carried out against the

former Russian military offi cer Sergei

Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.

On Wednesday the Kremlin denied

any involvement in the killing, which

took place on the same day that Ger-

many’s foreign minister was visiting

Moscow. “I categorically reject any link

between this incident, this murder and

offi cial Russia ,” said Vladimir Putin’s

spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

The revelation of Kalbitz’s neo-Nazi

links is the latest biographical detail to

undermine eff orts to lend the right-

wing populist party a respectable face.

Earlier t his month the newspaper

Die Welt unearthed two documen-

taries about the second world war

listing Kalbitz as a scriptwriter along-

side his late father-in-law, Stuart

Russell, a UK citizen who served in

the British army in Germany and later

settled near Paderborn.

Thomas Weber , a history profes-

sor at the University of Aberdeen,

described one of the fi lms, Hitler:

The Unknown Soldier, 1914-1918,

as a “skilful glorifi cation of Hitler”

that  uncritically digested National

Socialist propaganda and portrayed

the fi rst world war as the result of an

“evil alliance” of Jews and Marxists.

Kalbitz told Die Welt that he had

helped write the script for the fi lm

because the father of his wife was not

a native speaker, and he insisted that

Russell “was not a rightwing radical

or extremist”.

‘It did not wake

further interest

on my behalf ’

Andreas Kalbitz

AfD candidate

Robert Tait
Prague

Czech offi cials have vowed to ban
imitation vintage cars that off er tour-
ists open-topped sightseeing rides
from the streets of Prague after nearly
all of them were found to be danger-
ous and unroadworthy.
Of 58 vehicles inspected, 55 failed
safety tests conducted by Prague
city after complaints that they were
clogging the streets of the capital.
Some showed shocking faults, such
as home-welded parts, wheels fi xed
with a single screw and wing mirrors
designed for motorbikes.
The cars, supposedly represen-
tations of classic models of the 1920s
and 30s , have become an increas-
ingly common sight in Prague, which
is struggling to cope with a rising tide
of visitors. The vehicles are sympto-
matic of the over-tourism that many
residents say is blighting the city.
Kitsch-looking and often bearing
the inscription “Old Prague Car” on
their doors, the cars ferry tourists

through the city’s scenic areas in an

attempt to re create the feel of a bygone

age. However, most date from 2015

and 2016 and were manufactured in

Poland.

“What we found is that these cars

are dangerous,” said Adam Scheinherr ,

Prague’s deputy mayor responsible for

transport. “Their technical state is

dangerous, they are a danger to nearby

passing traffi c and they are a danger to

the passengers themselves.

“They have been cobbled together

with parts of diff erent vehicles. They

are not made for the streets of a city but

for a private setting like Disneyland.

“My officers have never seen

anything like this. They were shocked.

Never before have they found that 95%

of vehicles inspected failed the tests.”

Some of the cars were found to have

false documents, including one that

was registered as an LPG motorcycle

for six passengers.

Police trucks have confi scated some

of the cars. Other drivers were given a

30-day notice to repair technical prob-

lems or face losing their licence.

Prague drives

out unsafe

faux vintage

cars used for

sightseeing

▲ Tourists visiting Prague hire the

open-topped imitation vintage cars

for sightseeing trips around the city

PHOTOGRAPH: TETIANA VITSENKO/ALAMY

RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws