( Breitbart )
Police in the German capital of Berlin were called out to the area around the Antifa stronghold of Rigaer 94 a total of 717 times in 2020 to deal with incidents ranging from violence to threats and property damage.
Police were called out to the building, which has been partially illegally occupied for years by far-left Antifa militants, to deal with hundreds of different offences, according to a Berlin senate response to a question posed by libertarian Free Democrat MP Paul Fresdforf.
A total of 157 investigations by police revolved around reports of assaults, threats and insults against police officers, while another 90 investigations involved assaults on other people, German newspaper Die Welt reports.
Social Democrat politician Torsten Akmann, whos serves as Berlin Interior Secretary, noted that the area around the squat on Rigastrasse, located in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district, had become “characterized by crimes and administrative offences of the left-extremist scene.”
Die Welt also stated that many local residents were affected by the criminal behaviour and noted attacks on locals and property damage by far-left militants in the area.
There have been many attempts to evict the Antifa squatters from the building, including an illegal pub named “Kadterschmiede” which had an eviction order dismissed previously by a German court in 2019.
A recent court ruling granted police protection to a fire safety expert and a representative of the owner of the Rigaer 94 building in order to enter the building and examine it, but Antifa militants have vowed to fight any attempts at eviction.
“Any advance in Rigaer 94 must be a risk; our announcement that there may not be any winners means nothing more than that we want to throw Berlin into chaos if the aggression is not stopped immediately,” far leftists wrote on the noted extremist web platform Indymedia earlier this week.
Last year in July, one incident of far-left violence saw militants in the Rigaer Strasse area tear out the cables to street lights in the area before setting fires and vandalising local property.
A report from the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution leaked last year by German media also revealed that the country’s security services were concerned about the growing levels of violence within far-left circles.
According to the agencies, Antifa militants may be plotting targetted attacks on police on political opponents that could include assassination attempts.