Convicted bank robber campaigns for AfD in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state parliament
Sascha Gläser, sentenced in 2013 for serious robbery and extortion, ran as AfD direct candidate – now refuses to take up mandate.
AfD candidate Gläser: bank robbery 2012, state parliament candidate 2025
Sascha Gläser (42) from Rostock appears as an AfD direct candidate in electoral district 7 for the state parliament election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on the ballot – despite being convicted in 2013 with final binding effect for serious robbery and extortion. This is reported by BILD.
On 19 December 2012, Gläser entered a Volksbank branch in Duisburg-Rumeln at approximately 14:45. He opened his jacket, showed the cashier what appeared to be a firearm and demanded cash. He was not wearing a mask. Police at the time sought a man with "neat appearance, short hair with a hint of a receding hairline". One day after the robbery, Gläser was arrested in front of a kiosk.
The Duisburg district court sentenced him on 20 March 2013 to two years and six months imprisonment. The Duisburg public prosecutor's office confirmed to BILD: Gläser is the offender with a final binding conviction. According to a 2012 report, the "weapon" used was a pistol-shaped cigarette lighter.
In comments to the "Ostsee-Zeitung", which first reported the case, Gläser spoke about the act: "In retrospect, the act was an expression of a personal crisis and an escape from my living environment." He had lived in a "toxic relationship" and the act was the "greatest mistake of his life".
On the AfD website, Gläser had presented himself until recently as an information electronics technician, long-standing team leader and IHK trainer – with no reference to his criminal record.
AfD co-state party chairman Enrico Schult (47) told BILD he was "completely shocked": "That totally surprised us. Nothing appeared in his police certificate of good conduct." Since Gläser can no longer be removed from the ballot, the party expects him to decline the mandate in the event of success – which Gläser has already announced to them he would do. Schult emphasised: "Although he is legally considered rehabilitated, politicians are clearly held to different standards."
That the 2013 conviction no longer appears in the current certificate of good conduct is legally explicable: the statutory deletion periods have now expired.
CDU state party chairman Daniel Peters (45) commented on the case to BILD mockingly: "The AfD presents itself as a party of law and order – and sends a convicted bank robber into the race for the state parliament. There is nothing respectable about that."
SPD state business manager Julian Barlen (46) directed his criticism directly at AfD co-state chairman Leif-Erik Holm (56): "Clearly Herr Holm is nothing more than a fig leaf for a dangerously radical outfit that definitely must not be allowed power over the lives of people in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern."
Source: BILD