During a town hall meeting that year he called for audience members to stand up for Christian values.<\/p>\n
“Whoever does not support these values can leave this country any time, if he doesn’t agree. This is the freedom of every German,” he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ernst and co-defendant Markus H, who is accused of giving Ernst firearms training, allegedly attended that meeting.<\/p>\n According to prosecutors, it was after that meeting that Ernst “increasingly projected his hatred of foreigners on to L\u00fcbcke.”<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Ernst told the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main: “I fired the shot.”<\/p>\n He claimed he acted with Markus H. However prosecutors say they do not think Markus H was present at the scene of the crime.<\/p>\n Addressing L\u00fcbcke’s family, Ernst said that he was guided by “wrong thoughts” and\u00a0took responsibility for it.<\/a><\/p>\n “Nobody should die because they have a different opinion,” he said.<\/p>\n Investigators have also charged Ernst with attempted murder over the stabbing of an Iraqi asylum seeker in 2016.<\/p>\n He is known to have had links to neo-Nazi networks and investigators are exploring a possible connection to the National Socialist Underground (NSU) – an extremist group which shot dead 10 people, most of whom had migrant backgrounds, between 2000 and 2007.<\/p>\n Germany has seen a rise in support for the far right, especially in the country’s formerly-communist east.<\/p>\n There are 24,000 right-wing extremists in Germany, according to government figures. Nearly 13,000 are believed to have a tendency towards violence.<\/p>\n Authorities have\u00a0stepped up their crackdown on the country’s underground far-right\u00a0<\/a>following the politician’s murder and an attack on a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle last year.<\/p>\n Horst Seehofer, the country’s Interior Minister, has vowed to be tougher on security measures and has promised to crackdown on hate speech.<\/p>\n He recently declared far-right extremism the “biggest security threat facing Germany.”<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"File](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/B5FF\/production\/_107219564_054407277-1.jpg\")
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