Publications
Partners
Dresden - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday she had no plans to seek legal recourse after her name was scrawled on a mock gallows at an anti-immigration rally in the eastern city of Dresden earlier this week.
German prosecutors on Tuesday launched an investigation into a protester who carried the wooden model on Monday with nooses "reserved for" Merkel and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel at a weekly rally organised by Pegida, a German acronym for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.
"The appropriate prosecuting authorities will decide about the criminal relevance of such an incident," a government spokesperson told dpa on Tuesday.
"Further steps by the chancellery are not planned at the present time," the spokesperson added.
The wooden model could fulfil the criminal offence of disturbing the peace through the threat of crime and the public incitement to criminal activity, said Jan Hille, the public prosecutor in Dresden.
Hille said the builder of the gallows remained unknown.
As many as 9 000 people marched through Dresden as part of the Pegida rally, chanting slogans and waving anti-immigration placards, according to Durchgezaehlt, an organisation which estimates the size of public gatherings.
Germany officially expects around 800 000 asylum seekers this year. The record waves of migrants streaming across its borders has led some to question Merkel's decision last month to loosen asylum laws and allow in more refugees from war zones like Syria and Afghanistan.
According to a poll published in Focus Online on Tuesday, one-third of Germans surveyed are so unhappy with the chancellor's migration policy that they want her to resign.
