He looks surprised on the photo in the Cambodian media. And resigned. The man with the bald skull seems to suspect what to expect. Christopher F. (*not named as Christopher Flora in German news), half naked and tattooed squats in a garage in front of the scooter he robbed. There is a tool on the floor. Two policemen hold him by the arms turned backwards. Christopher F. has arrived at the end of a long journey. From Geising in the Erzgebirge to Southeast Asia. His time of freedom is over.
The Tagesspiegel learned how, on 12 November 2018, the police in the Cambodian town of Sen Monorom, without knowing it, stopped the flight of a German neo-Nazi.
Christopher F. has perpetrated more than a dozen political and non-political crimes in Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate. Personal injury, theft, predatory extortion, insult, trespass, property damage, fading of benefits and use of the marks of unconstitutional organizations (*Nazi symbols etc.).
A right-wing extremist, violent, a permanent threat to and police in Saxony have a warrant for his arrest. But when it can be carried out is unknown, as Christopher F. faces a lengthy prison sentence in Cambodia.
The police in the province Mondulkiri – Sen Monorom is the capital – investigated F. not only because of the stolen moped. A drug test after arrest revealed that he had taken methamphetamine.
The vice chief of police told the Khmer Times newspaper that if the man were to be convicted, he would face five years imprisonment, and more because of the brutality used in the robbery of the scooter. Christopher F. had stopped the driver on a street, hit him and threatened to kill him. In the house that F. had rented, he unscrewed parts of the scooter to hide its origin. But the police alerted by the victim quickly got the German on the track.
657 open arrest warrants
The story of Christopher F. is probably one of the most bizarre cases on the German Police’s list of right-wing extremists. In June, in response to a request from the Left Party, the Federal Government reported that there were 657 open arrest warrants “against 497 people belonging to the right-wing political spectrum”.
And at the latest after the dramatic end of the terror cell NSU in November 2011 feeds any message about disappeared right-wing extremists the fear, again form a terrorist group in secret . Even if the federal government speaks of only 18 open arrest warrants, which were issued because of a politically motivated violent crime. One of these 18 open arrest warrants is Christopher F. Because of an act that caused a stir and outrage over Saxony.
In mid January 2016 in the Erzgebirge village Geising, the hilly region around the town of Altenberg is a winter sports paradise, the wide toboggan slope in Geising is popular with locals and tourists. Christopher F. comes with a sledge, on his bald head he wears a steel helmet with a swastika. Several people see the forbidden symbol, but F. is left alone. He is known as the irascible right-wing man in the place where he lives with his father since 2014. Nobody wants to mess with him.
“I saw him running around with the helmet,” says a neighbor in Geising the Tagesspiegel. Christopher F. was a Nazi, “of course”. The neighbor shakes his head, “but do not write my name in the paper.”
Christopher F. sleds down the slope on January 17, 2016. A sled with two young refugees from Afghanistan gets in his way. They are stripping F., he tears off his steel helmet and strikes an Afghan.
The victim falls to the ground, F. occurs. The refugee spits blood. Only with difficulty the second Afghan and other sledders can separate the raging neo-Nazi from the victim. Defiant, Christopher F. raises his right arm to the Hitler salute and calls twice “victory salvation!”. Then he cuts off. Nobody stops F. The Afghan was later treated in the hospital.
The “Hobby-Hitler from the sledding hill”
The act causes nationwide attention. The “Bild” newspaper called F. “Rodel-Nazi”, other media write “Pisten-Hitler” and “Hobby-Hitler from sledding hill”. The police came to him in February 2016 at he rundown farmhouse in Geising, where he lives with his father, which is searched.
The officials find the steel helmet with the swastika, Christopher F. is taken for interrogation. He is released, although he was sentenced in December 2015 for a predatory extortion to ten months imprisonment. He must, however, take the punishment for the attack on the Afghans before the trial.
The District Court Dippoldiswalde sentenced Christopher F. in May 2016 for the violent crime in Geising to one year in prison without parole, as several suspended sentences had not prevented him from committing further offenses.
The judge would probably have imposed an even tougher punishment if F. had not repented in the court. He admitted the attack on the toboggan slope and apologized to the Afghans. The swastika on the helmet, the Hitler salute and the victory-salvation calls founded F. with his urge to attract attention.
His then-defender told the Tagesspiegel, “Why he put on the helmet, I could not explain. Christopher F. was certainly not a member of a far-right organization. He was not such a believer in perpetration of the neo-Nazis for years,” says the lawyer. In Geising, on the other hand, a neighbor of F. says that three years ago, he was listening to the street with right-wing extremist music. “He put a box in the window, then there was the noise, and on Sunday at noon.” The woman had complained. She says F. apologized. After that he was running around with headphones.
The urge to stand out as a true provocateur did not diminish in Christopher F.’s imprisonment. In Dresden Prison he painted SS insignia with a black pen on his trouser pockets. This earned him four more months imprisonment from the District Court of Dresden.
Why only Cambodia?
Nevertheless, F. was released prematurely in November 2017, on probation. The man had never been in jail before. Despite his criminal energy, he was released after two thirds of his detention.
F. did not come to his senses. In April 2018, he disappeared from Geising, where F. should report regularly. The police were now unaware of his location. Since F. has a valid passport and is not wanted, he could go abroad before the search for him begins.
The district court Dresden does what it has to do in such cases. The parole is revoked and a “warrant of execution” issued. Christopher F. is now being searched for abroad. “There are still 122 days in jail,” says a spokesman for the Dresden prosecutor. But if F. had not robbed the scooter in Sen Monorom in November 2018, the German authorities might not have known that the neo-Nazi had left for Cambodia.
Why Cambodia? In the country there are no organizations of neo-Nazis, a German right-wing extremist will hardly meet a “comrade” there. In security circles, another theory is considered probable: Christopher F. was evidently able to fall back on old contacts.
The man had once been as a “dropout” in Cambodia, for about a year and a half. Not as a dropout from the far-right scene, “but as a dropout from the bourgeois world”. In the passport of F., which the Internet portal “Cambodia News English” shows in a photo in November 2018, the issuing authority is the German Embassy in Phnom Penh. Issue date is January 9, 2012. Security circles also tell that Christopher F. was dating a Cambodian woman and she had a baby with him. He later separated from the woman. However, F. could have used connections in Cambodia during his escape from Germany in 2018.
Father and son remained strangers in the place
In the idyllic Erzgebirge resort of Geising, neighbors only know that F. has “gone abroad”. Of the residents that Tagesspiegel talked to, almost everyone wanted nothing to do with Christopher F. and his dad. That the police appeared in 2016 to arrest the son, everyone got along. In addition, police officers questioned Fs several neighbors. However, most of them do not even know their father’s first name, who settled in Geising in 2014.
The pensioner from Rhineland-Palatinate bought a dilapidated homestead. Crumbling plaster, faded curtains, a weathered wooden door. At her a sign: “for sale”. In the yard is a large, semi-open steel container. Everywhere lumber.
Why Viktor F. came to Geising five years ago we was not well known to his neighbors. This also applied to the son. Christopher F. “He helped the father with the roof,” says one man, “but he never worked properly.”
This neighbor also insists that his name remains anonymous. A woman came running after the conversation with the reporter, “you write under no circumstances, our names! One day the son will come back, who knows who comes around the corner. “A neighbor tells me that his father once had visitors, then the son came and there was a fight. The guests immediately packed their belongings and drove away. “
Father and son remained strangers in the place. When asked why neighbors point to the neglected farm. And a woman says, “you will not become an Erzgebirgler that fast.” Only one neighbor had something more to do with his father. “He helped me with the wood,” he says. This refers to the wooden slats clad wall on a terrace. Father F. used to be a carpenter in Rhineland-Palatinate, but he does not know much more. To his son he remembers that “H had an Asian woman with her child” there. “But only once.” And where is the father now? “He is with his girlfriend in the Czech Republic.”
“He’s in prison,” says a Cambodian policeman
The Foreign Office says little about the case. “The case is known to the embassy,” it is said, “the person concerned is cared for as a German citizen under the Consular Code.” The Embassy in Phnom Penh had no information about F’s crimes in Germany. The Cambodian police are also less willing to provide information. “He’s in prison,” says a senior official on the phone. When asked whether there was already a lawsuit against Christopher F., he repeated, “he is in prison.” Any contact with F. is not possible.
Dresden public prosecutor’s office does not know when to get him back and that he will have to serve the 122-day remaining sentence. There is no legal aid agreement between the Federal Republic and Cambodia, says a spokesman. Whether F. can be delivered is unclear.
*Thanks to Frank from https://www.tagesspiegel.de
