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 Attracted 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 identification measures 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, Karner said.

Ministry of the Interior Wants to Implement Recommendations

According to the commission's report, the awareness was lacking among the forces that a police operation at Peršmanhof, which was the site of a Nazi massacre of members of the Slovenian ethnic group by police forces in 1945, requires special sensitivity. It is therefore recommended, among other things, to engage with the history of 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 in the executive and authorities in multilingual areas, also at the leadership level.

The Ministry of the Interior wants to implement 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 the appropriation of memorial sites," Karner said.

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

A criminal investigation by the Federal Office for the Prevention of Corruption and Corruption Control (BAK) is pending against the deputy head of the LSE on suspicion of abuse of office, which has interrupted the disciplinary proceedings, reported Carinthia's State Police Director Michaela Kohlweiß.

In Carinthia, the initiation of disciplinary consequences against the district governor of Völkermarkt is being examined: "It is of particular concern to me that everything is done to draw appropriate consequences for the misconduct of the three responsible for the police operation, which was unequivocally established by the analysis commission in their report," said Carinthia's Governor Peter Kaiser (SPÖ). Both the office inspection and the personnel organization unit at the Carinthian state government office have been involved. Now everything must be done "to ensure that such incidents do not recur."

FPÖ Calls It a "Scandal Report"

In contrast, the Carinthian ÖVP criticized the commission's accusation of the illegality of the police operation as "excessive." If the "activists" had shown the same prudence "that they demand from authorities and police, there would have been neither a camp nor an official act," said the party. And party chairman Martin Gruber said: "It is decidedly to be rejected if left-wing extremism is trivialized, generally excused, and even a supposed attack on the ethnic group is staged to conceal left-wing extremism."

The FPÖ spoke of a "scandal report" and saw it as "a maneuver to dismantle our own police and issue a blank check to left-wing extremist perpetrators of violence." Despite its tendentious orientation, the report refutes the malicious allegation that the operation was directed against the Carinthian Slovenes or the memorial site, said the blue security spokesman Gernot Darmann.

In contrast, Vice Chancellor Andreas Babler, together with State Secretary Jörg Leichtfried (both SPÖ), welcomed the detailed and comprehensive preparation of the incidents and called for "clear personnel consequences now." The NEOS also urged "further steps and clear consequences" after the important clarification work. "More sensitization for memorial sites and more deployment documentation are sensible steps, but these announcements alone are not enough," said the pink deputy Janos Juvan and saw Karner "responsible for ensuring that this illegal operation has personnel consequences for those responsible."

The Greens felt vindicated in their criticism of the operation by the report. "Such an abuse of power must never happen again in a constitutional state," said Carinthia's state spokeswoman Olga Voglauer and demanded the immediate dismissal of the district governor as well as a public apology from Interior Minister Karner. An apology from the politically responsible to all those affected was also demanded by the museum operators and the organizers of the Antifa camp, as well as "real and sustainable consequences" for those responsible for the operation.

(APA/Red)

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