W. German Neo-Nazi Forms New Group After Old One Is Outlawed

The leader of an outlawed neo-Nazi group said Friday that he has formed a new group to pursue his political goals, although the banning order prohibits him from forming successor organizations.

His goals include expelling foreign workers and people who have sought asylum in West Germany.

“Right after the banning of the Nationale Sammlung (National Assembly), I formed a new organization with the name Initiative Volkswille (Popular Will Initiative),” Michael Kuehnen said. “I want to keep being politically active.”

Kuehnen said he hoped to run candidates in municipal elections in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia this autumn.

The crackdown on Kuehnen’s 170-member group came as West Germans warily eye a possible resurgence of right-wing extremism.

In Bonn, Interior Ministry spokesman Michael-Andreas Butz said Thursday’s ban of the Nationale Sammlung was a success and noted that the order would keep the party out of city elections in Frankfurt and Langen next month. There was no official response to Kuehnen’s announcement that he had formed a new group.

Nationale Sammlung had entered candidates in the Frankfurt and Langen elections. Its platform included renaming a railway station after Adolf Hitler.

An appeals court ruled Friday that the radical right-wing German National Democratic Party may hold a two-day rally this weekend at Rahden.

Officials in Rahden, about 35 miles south of Bremen, said they had forbidden the rally because they feared violence. A court in Minden rejected the ban and the appeals court in Muenster agreed.

More than 1,000 people are expected to attend the annual rally of the party, which seeks the expulsion of foreigners to maintain what it calls a “national German identity.”

Kuehnen, who has spent more than seven years in prison for his neo-Nazi activities, spoke to reporters outside a Munich court, where he was fined $490 for holding an illegal rally in the Bavarian capital in May.

He said most members of his new group belonged to Nationale Sammlung. and “We want to do away with the system.”

Police raided homes of Nationale Sammlung members, confiscating guns, knives, ammunition and Nazi propaganda.

“The Gruesome Dreams of Neo-Nazi Kuehnen,” said a headline in the mass-circulation newspaper Bild.