Germany: Alarming rise in neo-Nazis

BERLIN - The number of far-right crimes in Germany climbed by 12 percent in 2004, while the number of known neo-Nazis rose from 3,000 to 3,800, according to figures released by the government Wednesday.

Police nationwide registered 12,051 offenses with far-right connections, the highest level since 2000, with

violent crimes rising from 759 in 2003 to 776 in 2004, according to the new report from the Lower Saxony agency that tracks extremism.

Germany's police union called the numbers alarming, and said they required a concerted legal fight by the

government against neo-Nazism.

"The increase of violent offenses shows that right-wing extremism has let its civil facade drop," the group's head Konrad Freiburg said. "The police can't put on the emergency brakes and be the only repair service in the fight against right-wing extremism and other criminal developments."

Increased concern

Far-right extremism in Germany has drawn particular concern since the fringe National Democratic Party, known by its German initials NPD, garnered enough votes to give it seats in the Saxony state parliament, the only state where it has a place in the legislature.

It then provoked outrage in January when its members of parliament walked out of a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.