Peršmanhof Deployment for Commission Unlawful

The police operation at Peršmanhof in Carinthia on July 27 was disproportionate, unlawful, and questionable in several respects. This is the conclusion reached by the analysis commission appointed by the Ministry of the Interior in its final report presented on Thursday. The behavior of the deputy head of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (LSE), who ordered and led the large-scale operation at an anti-fascist camp, is particularly criticized.

The officer, who has since been assigned to another department, initiated and led the operation without consulting superiors, "although he was largely not responsible for it," the report states. Misconduct is also attributed to the district governor of Völkermarkt and the head of the Carinthia branch of the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum (BFA). The district governor limited himself to an observer role and thus did not fulfill his responsibility for a lawful procedure as the official leader. The BFA officer, in turn, ordered arrests without being authorized to do so, according to the commission.

Peršmanhof Operation Drew Criticism

The four-hour large-scale operation at an important memorial site for the resistance of Slovenian partisans against the Nazi regime caused massive criticism - also from the neighboring country Slovenia. The basis for the operation, which involved officers from the police, LSE, and BFA, members of the Rapid Intervention Group (SIG), a service dog handler, and a police helicopter, was the suspicion of administrative offenses due to incorrectly set up tents.

"We have not found any comprehensible documentation in this regard," said the head of the commission, Mathias Vogl, at the press conference. The justification appears in the overall view "as a mere pretext for intervention for the purposes of constitutional protection." The identity checks should have been limited to the users of the two tents set up outside the farmstead, but instead "they were extended with great effort to all camp participants," Vogl said.

The behavior of the police, as well as the official operation leader and the BFA representative, was partly unlawful, but the other police officers present on site fulfilled their duties properly, emphasized Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP). It is also important that the commission, which includes representatives of the Slovenian minority, found that the operation was not directed against the Slovenian ethnic group in Carinthia nor against the Peršmanhof memorial site, Karner said.

Interior Ministry to Adopt Recommendations

According to the commission's report, the awareness was lacking among the task forces that a police operation at the Peršmanhof, which in 1945 was the site of an NS massacre of members of the Slovenian ethnic group by police forces, requires special sensitivity. It is therefore recommended, among other things, to engage with the history of the Peršmanhof as part of the executive's training and in the LSE Carinthia, to increase the use of body cameras by the executive, and to ensure sufficient language competence among the executive and authorities in multilingual areas, also at the leadership level.

The Interior Ministry intends to adopt these recommendations. Karner announced that there will be region-specific training for police officers in the future. To ensure sensitivity when intervening at memorial sites, a four-eyes principle with the superior department and also contact with the management of the memorial site should be maintained before any intervention. Additionally, it is important to prevent "an appropriation of memorial sites," according to Karner.

The Director General for Public Security, Franz Ruf, reported that he had informed the Slovenian ambassador of the report's content the previous day and had also expressed his regret for the misconduct of the officers involved. Regarding the misconduct of the three officers, a factual report on service and disciplinary law will be submitted by the Interior Ministry.

Against the deputy head of the LSE, a criminal procedure by the Federal Office for the Prevention of Corruption and Corruption Control (BAK) is pending on suspicion of abuse of office, which has interrupted the disciplinary procedure, reported the Carinthian State Police Director Michaela Kohlweiß.

(APA/Red)

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