Asylum judge accused of racist and homophobic comments
A German judge who presides over asylum cases has been accused of posting racist rants online about foreigners dragging Germany “back into the Stone Age”.
Bengt Fuchs, the vice-president of the Gera administrative court, is under investigation over a string of offensive online messages which he allegedly posted under the username “BeFuchs287”.
Mr Fuchs has denied he is the author of the posts and has suggested that they were written by someone trying to impersonate him.
German magazine Spiegel, which has tracked down the posts from the “BeFuchs287” account, said the offending messages belonged to an account registered under Mr Fuchs’s work email address at the Gera administrative court.
The magazine said he used “the N-word,” as well as the homophobic slur “f----t”.
He allegedly wrote, in an apparent reference to foreigners, that “if these types continue to be tolerated as a form of society, we will bomb our culture bit by bit back to the Stone Age”.
Mr Fuchs also allegedly posted a message suggesting that it would be a good idea to return asylum seekers by having them “dropped by parachute ... over their homeland”.
And he is alleged to have complained that pro-refugee demonstrators who try to prevent deportations were “ugly women with saggy t--s, double-barrel names and baggy shirts”.
The messages are particularly controversial as Mr Fuchs presides over asylum seekers’ cases in court and has a reputation for being very strict on them. He is also said to be close to the hard-Right AfD party, having attended an AfD election party in 2018.
According to Spiegel, Mr Fuchs has been removed from asylum duties and will instead deal with traffic and communications law.
Michael Obhues, the president of the administrative court of Gera, told Spiegel: “An assessment will be made after the investigations in the initiated disciplinary proceedings are complete.”
Mr Fuchs has denied wrongdoing, insisting: “I did not make such vulgar statements; they are alien to me and neither in content, nor form, do they correspond to my tone. I fundamentally do not support such views. In my view, this must be a very nasty, ‘fake’ attack on me by whoever it was.”