Former AfD co-leader Petry faces perjury trial
October 23, 2018
The Dresden district court on Tuesday said it would hear evidence against former AfD co-leader Petry over an allegation of perjury.
The 43-year-old is accused of lying under oath in November 2015, when she and her fellow AfD member Carsten Hütter are alleged to have given conflicting testimony about the AfD candidate list and campaign financing for Saxony's 2014 state election.
The election was the first that saw the AfD take seats in one of Germany's state parliaments; it's now represented in every state chamber bar one.
Petry — who won a seat with the AfD in that election — has already admitted to a mistake in the evidence that she gave at the electoral oversight committee hearing in November 2015, but she said it was not intentional.
Read more: How the far-right AfD taps into Germany's East-West divide
Perjury can carry a sentence of at least a year in jail in Germany, or six months in minor cases. A date for the hearing has still not been set.
The accusations are in connection with loans that AfD candidates in Saxony gave to the far-right party to finance campaigning in the eastern state. The AfD was accused of taking a candidate off its list because he was not willing to give a loan to the party.
Read more: AfD says German state, media favor the left — do they?
Petry joined the AfD in 2013 and quickly rose through the ranks to be one of the party's public faces. She assumed the role of party co-leader in 2015, but stepped down in 2017, soon after being elected to the German national parliament on the AfD ticket. Petry said she would not be representing the AfD in the federal parliament, but she is still entitled to a Bundestag seat having won a direct mandate in the 2017 vote.
In October last year, Petry announced that she would form a new party called the Blue Party, intended to be positioned to the left of the AfD.
rc/msh (dpa, epd)