AfD party leader in Brussels remains in office and says he will fire arrested employee

NOS News•today, 11:30 am

German MEP Maximilian Krah will remain as party leader of the radical right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the European elections and will dismiss his employee who was arrested on Monday on suspicion of espionage. Krah announced this after a meeting with party leadership.

Krah did say that he would not be present at the kick-off of the campaign for the European elections.

Jian Guo, a Chinese-German associate of Krah, was arrested in Dresden on Monday. Guo is suspected of having passed on various parliamentary documents from the European Parliament to China.

In an initial response to X yesterday, Krah called spying for a foreign state “a serious accusation.” He said he would fire Guo if the suspicions were proven.

The arrest increased pressure for Krah to resign. Bundestag member Strack-Zimmermann, among others, called on the AfD party leader to resign. Krah himself doesn’t want to know about that.

He responds laconically to X with the words “what did the press expect?” to a German journalist who reports that Krah emerged unscathed from a meeting with party leaders and remains as party leader.

It is the second time in a short time that the party has been discredited. At the beginning of this month, the second candidate on the European list, current Bundestag member Petr Bystron, was linked to money from Russia. AfD then announced that it would continue to support the prominent party member for the time being.