BERLIN, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- A protestor who aggressively confronted journalists at a recent far-right PEGIDA rally in Dresden and was subsequently identified as an employee of the Saxony state criminal police office will leave the force, a spokesperson for the regional security authority announced on Thursday.
The spokesperson said that the person in question would be transferred to "another, appropriate function outside of the Saxony police until further notice." The decision was made in response to the so-called "Pegizei" scandal during a recent conversation with the employee and his attorney and will take effect from September 3rd.
"Pegizei" is a combination of the German word for police (Polizei) and the acronym of the "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident" (PEGIDA). The term has been used to refer to widely-publicized incident in the Saxon capital Dresden in which local security authorities stand accused of having undermined constitutional press freedom during a recent PEGIDA demonstration against chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).
In video footage which spread rapidly online, the employee of the Saxony state criminal police office, can be seen hurling verbal abuse at a team of "ZDF" journalists filming the gathering. Rather than reigning in the aggressive PEGIDA supporter, however, police proceeded to inspect and temporarily detain the "ZDF" team over the course of nearly an hour while letting their colleague on vacation off the hook.
The resulting perception that regional security authorities were in cahoots with PEGIDA, a movement which was founded by multiple sedition, drug dealing and burglary convict Lutz Bachmann, has provoked widespread outrage in Germany. Ulrike Demmer, a spokesperson for the federal government, urged the state of Saxony to clarify the incident swiftly and draw necessary personnel consequences.
In the meanwhile, Saxon police have admitted to making mistakes during the incident and issued an apology to "ZDF". According to media reports, the soon-to-be seconded far-right protestor worked in a department concerned with white collar crime and had access to a range of sensitive data bases.
