Translated With Deepl from German:
In future, the Federal Minister of the Interior wants to have it recorded if anti-Semitic crimes have a foreign or religious background. Until now, most crimes automatically fell under "right-wing".
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) wants to gain a more realistic picture of the extent of anti-Semitic crimes with a foreign or religious background. To this end, she will "advocate in the relevant bodies" to change the recording criteria for crime statistics, the F.A.Z. learned Thursday from the Ministry of the Interior (BMI).
Previously, the agreement between the Federal Criminal Police Office and the state criminal police offices was to "assign xenophobic as well as anti-Semitic crimes to the right-wing phenomenon area if the circumstances of the crime and/or the attitude of the perpetrator do not provide any evidence to the contrary regarding the perpetrator's motivation."
The most recent statistics available, for 2022, list only 105 anti-Semitic crimes that were shown to be related to "foreign or religious ideology," and eight crimes that were assigned to the Left-wing phenomenon area. In contrast, 2185 crimes were attributed to the right-wing phenomenon area.
Changed situation due to Hamas attack
The Interior Ministry justifies the intended deletion of the "special rule" with the changed situation since the Hamas terror attack on Israeli citizens. The rule was "appropriate in the past to ensure that anti-Semitic and xenophobic crimes are recorded as such and correctly assigned," it says. Nevertheless, the ministry is of the opinion that there is "no longer a need for the special rule," as police authorities are now "comprehensively sensitized to the issue." Moreover, if the special rule were to be continued, there would be "the risk of misunderstandings and misinterpretations".
Why anti-Semitic crimes have so far been classified as right-wing when there is no clear background is not entirely clear. The House says that many countries would probably have found it "unsatisfactory" if too many anti-Semitic crimes had been listed under the - also existing - heading "not to be assigned."
The deletion of the so-called special rule must be decided by the Quality Control Working Group, which includes representatives of the Federal Criminal Police Office and the state criminal investigation departments. The group meets once or twice a year. The new, more meaningful statistics are not expected until 2024 at the earliest, according to the BMI.
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