Germany's AfD top candidate in EU vote stops campaign appearances after SS comments

Reuters
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BERLIN (Reuters) - German far-right AfD's top candidate in European elections Maximilian Krah will refrain from further campaign activities and will resign from the party's leadership board with immediate effect, the politician said in a statement on Wednesday.

This comes after he told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica last weekend that the SS, the Nazi's main paramilitary force, were "not all criminals".

Krah said in a statement that his comments "are being misused as a pretext to damage our party".

(Reporting by Andrey Sychev; Editing by Madeline Chambers)