Political Police (Switzerland)

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The domestic intelligence service set up in Switzerland in 1935 to maintain “internal and external security” was called the Political Police . With the fishing scandal , however, the term political police became unpopular, so that the federal state protection bodies are now referred to as the preventive police . Until the end of 2009, the Swiss domestic intelligence service was called the Service for Analysis and Prevention (DAP). The Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) was created in 2010 by merging the DAP with the Strategic Intelligence Service SND .

Organization and tasks

Together with the judicial police, the political police formed the police service of the Federal Prosecutor's Office , which in the 1980s was still subordinate to the Federal Department of Justice and Police . Apart from the hierarchical control (i.e. the control of the superiors), no checks were carried out on the police service of the Federal Prosecutor's Office ("Federal Police"). In connection with the Fichen affair, this problem was paraphrased with the catchphrase “ State within the State ”. The personal union of the chief of the federal police and the chief of military defense in the EMD was also criticized .

According to a Federal Council ordinance from 1958, the task of the political police was to “monitor and prevent actions” that could endanger the security of Switzerland. The political police functioned according to the concept of preventive state protection , which also caused discussions during the Fichenskandal. According to the concept of preventive state protection, investigations could be started before a crime had even occurred. The counterpart to this was the judicial police, which - like regular police stations today - only began investigating after a crime had occurred. From a strictly legal point of view, according to BStP Article 17, Paragraph 3, the Political Police was the “search and information service” of the judicial police. As such, she created a disproportionately large file (around 900,000 person entries), which caused great outrage during the Fichenskandal in 1989-90.

history

In fact, the political police already existed at the end of the 19th century, albeit under a different name. The police office created the following, actually secret, directive from the federal government to the cantons in 1888, but soon came to the public: “The cantonal police directors carefully collect all notes [...] about people [who deal with issues relating to our social organization] Name, origin, occupation, means of subsistence and antecedents [...]. » The emergence of the political police must be seen in the context of the socialist or social democratic efforts in Europe at the turn of the century. The same tendencies which led to the Socialist Law in Germany led to its creation .

During the Second World War , but especially during the Cold War , the Political Police was further expanded and in 1958 it was legally fixed at the ordinance level (see above). Today this is explained by the fact that in those times there was great fear of a hostile takeover. The Cold War had a particularly significant impact: until the 1990s, state security activities focused on communists and their sympathizers, and ultimately even on all politically left-wing people and organizations.

The surveillance practices of the Political Police never aroused the interest of the general public until the aforementioned fishing scandal; Left groups and the Social Democrats, however, repeatedly protested against the measures they described as "an instrument of repression of the bourgeois class". The Political Police was abolished as part of the Fichen affair.

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