German AfD Lawmaker Severely Injured in Bremen Street Attack

(Bloomberg) -- A member of parliament for Germany’s far-right AfD party was severely beaten in the street in Bremen on Monday evening in what police said was probably a politically motivated attack.

Frank Magnitz, who is also the AfD’s Bremen chairman, was seriously injured by three masked men who knocked him out with a piece of wood and kicked him in the head as he lay on the ground, the AfD’s branch in the city said in a statement on Facebook. A passing construction worker stepped in to end the attack, the party said.

The Bremen prosecutors’ office and a unit of the Federal Crime Office responsible for probing politically motivated incidents are investigating, Bremen police said.

The Bremen AfD said Monday’s attack represents “a black day for democracy in Germany” and accused rival political parties of supporting extreme left-wing “Antifa” activists.

“The AfD is more and more the target of left-wing attacks, which the other parties fail to condemn or even show support for,” the party said.

Values Betrayed

Top officials from Germany’s main political parties condemned the attack, along with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief spokesman, Steffen Seibert, who said in a Tweet that he hopes the police will quickly catch the culprits.

“The AfD is political opponent of our tolerant and peaceful society,” Andrea Nahles, chairwoman of the Social Democrats, said in a Tweet. “But people who fight the party and its politicians with violence, betray these values and endanger our coexistence. I condemn the attack on Frank Magnitz in the strongest possible terms.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Iain Rogers in Berlin at irogers11@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Chris Reiter

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