Austrian far-right activist Martin Sellner, banned from entering Switzerland, was arrested on Saturday after crossing the border.
This 35-year-old man, who advocates mass expulsions of foreigners, was invited by the far-right group Junge Tat, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islam positions, to speak at a conference in Zurich on Saturday.
Swiss federal police said in a decision released earlier this month that Sellner “is prohibited from entering the territories of Switzerland and Liechtenstein from October 10 to 27, 2024.”
He was arrested by Swiss police on Saturday in the northeastern canton of Thurgau, in the town of Kreuzlingen.
“Shortly after 10:30 a.m., a 35-year-old person was arrested by cantonal police forces on Swiss territory in Kreuzlingen and taken for further investigation,” a police spokesperson told AFP. .
Also banned from entering Germany
Earlier this month, Swiss federal police spokesperson Christoph Gnagi told AFP that Swiss law “provides for entry bans as a preventive police measure when there are indications of a threat to internal or external security.
Swiss police prevented Sellner from speaking at a far-right rally organized by Junge Tat near Zurich in March and expelled him.
He was also banned from entering Germany in March, following a meeting with the far-right AfD party that sparked an outcry in the country. But a German court overturned the entry ban in May.
Sellner’s Identitarian Movement adheres to the far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory, according to which white Europeans are deliberately being supplanted by non-white immigrants.
One of Sellner’s main proposals is “remigration”, which involves expelling people without Austrian nationality “who are long-term unemployed” or who live in “unassimilated parallel societies”.
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