European Parliament Clears the Way for Further Investigations Against AfD Politician Petr Bystron
On Tuesday, a majority of the MEPs in Strasbourg voted to lift the immunity of Petr Bystron, an AfD politician, paving the way for further investigations. The background to the case is an investigation by the Munich I public prosecutor’s office into a post Bystron made on a social network.
The prosecutor’s office accuses Bystron of spreading a sign of unconstitutional organizations in the post, which refers to the depiction of a suspected Hitler salute by German politicians in a collage he posted in 2022 on the occasion of the departure of the Ukrainian ambassador Andrei Melnyk from Germany. Some of the politicians depicted in the collage had their right arm raised upwards. According to the prosecutor’s office, the impression is created for the viewer that the politicians are showing the Hitler salute and Bystron is accused of at least tacitly accepting this.
According to the news, Bystron was supposed to appear in the Munich district court in 2024 in the case, but the proceedings were suspended after Bystron was elected to the European Parliament last year. With the European Parliament’s decision, the criminal proceedings can now be resumed.
The German Bundestag, to which Bystron belonged at the time, had already lifted his immunity in 2023. Bystron’s lawyer had previously rejected the accusations against his client, calling the investigation “juridical nonsense.”
Bystron himself claims that the investigations are politically motivated and that the picture was not a problem for a year until the EU election campaign began, at which point the prosecutor’s office discovered a Hitler salute and staged a media-savvy prosecution against him.