By Andreas Rinke
BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s domestic spy agency BfV has paused its classification of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an extremist organisation in what the AfD on Thursday called a partial victory for its challenge against the decision.
The agency would not publicly refer to the AfD as a “confirmed right-wing extremist movement” until an administrative court in the western city of Cologne has ruled on an AfD bid for an injunction, a court statement said.
The BfV’s move last week to classify the far-right AfD as extremist produced sharp reactions along the fault lines of German politics, with some lawmakers calling for the AfD to be banned and the AfD casting it as an attack on democracy.
It also sparked strong criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling on the German authorities to reverse their decision.
The extremist classification allows the Cologne-based spy agency to step up monitoring of the AfD, for example by recruiting informants and intercepting party communications.
“The measures associated with the classification will also be suspended,” a court spokesperson said without elaborating.
The agency’s 1,100-page experts’ report, which will not be released to the public, found the AfD to be a racist and anti-Muslim organisation.
Founded in 2013, the AfD has surged to become Germany’s second biggest party but other parties have shunned it as toxic.
The AfD says its designation is a politically motivated attempt to discredit and criminalise it.
Its leadership welcomed the decision by the BfV, which the court said was not acknowledging any legal obligation.
“This is a first important step towards our actual exoneration and thus countering the accusation of right-wing extremism,” party leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel said in a joint statement.
The BfV did not immediately comment.
The agency’s decision to pause the AfD’s classification does not mean the BfV has revised its assessment of the party.
The AfD has previously lost a legal challenge when its now-defunct youth organization was classified as right-wing extremist.
On Wednesday, the Republican chairman of the U.S. Senate intelligence committee called for American spy agencies to “pause” intelligence sharing with the BfV, whose mission includes counter-terrorism.
Senator Tom Cotton called for the pause until Germany’s government “treats the AfD as a legitimate opposition party”, according to a letter to Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of National Intelligence.
(Reporting by Matthias Inverardi in Duesseldorf and Andreas Rinke in Berlin, additional reporting by Ludwig Burger, writing by Thomas Seythal, editing by Matthias Williams)
