Sven Hüber, deputy federal chairman of Germany’s largest police union, the Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP), chairman of the Federal Police’s main staff council and a critic of Alternative for Germany (AfD), has resigned after serious accusations against him were reported in the media.
In a personal statement released by the GdP on August 26, Hüber said he was stepping down because of several legal and court proceedings he had initiated against what he described as “defamatory and reputation-damaging” media accusations relating to the period before he joined the Federal Police and before his work for the union.
“I am resigning from my office with immediate effect because there are currently several legal and judicial examinations I have initiated against raised media defamatory and reputation-damaging accusations from before my service in the Federal Police and before the GdP,” he said.
“I want, during the necessary court confrontation, to keep the daily new, untenable accusations away from the GdP.”
Hüber said he had informed GdP federal chairman Jochen Kopelke, the executive federal board and the federal control committee after intensive discussions. He is handing over his areas of responsibility and all activities with immediate effect.
The union stated that it would continue to pursue criminal and civil action against those responsible for “false claims, threats and distorted publications”. The GdP represents more than 210,000 police employees across Germany.
The reports at the centre of the dispute were published by the news website Apollo News on August 25.
Citing a sworn statement from a former conscript, Axel Krause, the outlet alleged that Hüber, while serving as an officer in the East German border troops in the late 1980s, severely mistreated a detained person who had attempted to flee across the inner-German border. Krause said he saw Hüber push a pistol into the mouth of the pinned man and later kick him in the face.
It further claimed he had actively promoted enforcement of the shoot-to-kill order against border violators. According to Krause, Hüber told soldiers he would keep using the older wording of the daily order, under which those crossing were to be tracked down, detained or destroyed, after it was amended in 1988.
Hüber is said to have demoted a post leader who had twice failed to hit people escaping to West Berlin. Krause said Hüber tore the man’s shoulder boards off in front of the assembled company and described him as a traitor.
Hüber, 62, has held the post of deputy federal chairman since September 2022. He joined the police and the union in 1990 and has chaired the Federal Police main staff council at the Federal Ministry of the Interior since 2000.
Historian Hubertus Knabe, who assisted Apollo News with archive research, said he had already checked some of Krause’s account against Ministry for State Security files and found it credible.
Hüber answered the outlet’s questions through a six-page letter from his lawyer rejecting all the allegations, Apollo News reported.
He had already faced internal criticism within the GdP in early August over comments on how police officers should respond to a possible AfD-led interior ministry. Writing ahead of the Saxony-Anhalt state election on September 6, he raised the prospect of an “internal emergency” and argued officers should be ready to restore constitutional order.
Several regional branches of the union distanced themselves from parts of those remarks. The North Rhine-Westphalia branch, the GdP’s largest, said on August 12 that the oath of office did not deprive officers of the right to vote.
The accusations concerning his time in the East German border forces predate both his service in the Federal Police and his trade union career. Hüber served with Border Regiment 33 in Berlin-Treptow, the unit in whose sector Chris Gueffroy became the last person shot dead at the Berlin Wall in February 1989. He has never been accused of involvement in that killing.
