Germany’s military intelligence agency is investigating 550 Bundeswehr soldiers suspected of far-right activities, many of them serving with elite special force commando units.
The militärischer abschirmdienst (MAD) opened 20 investigations last year into the kommando spezialkräfte (KSK) — the German equivalent of the SAS — which has emerged as a hotbed of right-wing extremism in the country.
Christof Gramm, the head of MAD, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that 14 soldiers were discharged last year for extremism, including eight neo-Nazis. Another 40 were sacked for a “lack of constitutional loyalty”, he said. “The aim is to remove not only extremists, but also people with a lack of constitutional loyalty from the Bundeswehr,” he told the newspaper, announcing that his agency is to begin publishing
