he'd received death threats from neo-Nazis.

Asylum-seekers and refugees, meanwhile, continue to be the targets of attacks in Germany and are the victims of most far-right violence.

Police registered 609 attacks on the newcomers to Germany during the first half of 2019, according to newspaper the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.

Earlier this month, German media reported that the federal criminal police agency plans to overhaul its structures to step up the fight against far-right groups and hate crimes.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alexander Gauland Co-chairman Alexander Gauland said the German national soccer team's defender Jerome Boateng might be appreciated for his performance on the pitch - but people would not want "someone like Boateng as a neighbor." He also argued Germany should close its borders and said of an imageshowing a drowned refugee child: "We can't be blackmailed by children's eyes."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alice Weidel Alice Weidel generally plays the role of "voice of reason" for the far-right populists, but she, too, is hardly immune to verbal miscues. Welt newspaper, for instance, published a 2013 memo allegedly from Weidel in which she called German politicians "pigs" and "puppets of the victorious powers in World War II. Weidel initially claimed the mail was fake, but now admits its authenticity.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Frauke Petry German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the former co-chair of the AfD told a regional newspaper in 2016. Officers must "use firearms if necessary" to "prevent illegal border crossings." Communist East German