Germany's top court weighs ban on far-right NPD party

Germany's highest court is hearing March 1 a landmark request to ban a neo-Nazi fringe party, more than a decade after a first attempt failed.

The Federal Constitutional Court on March 1 opened three days of hearings on an application from parliament's upper house, which represents Germany's 16 state governments, for a ban on the National Democratic Party.

The case before the Court argues that the far-right and anti-immigrant National Democratic Party (NPD) spells a threat to the country's democratic order.

In 2003, the Constitutional Court rejected a first attempt to ban the party because paid government informants within the group were partially responsible for the evidence against it. Officials said there's no evidence from informants in the new case, the Associated Press reported.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government supports the case, although it has not formally joined the high-stakes legal gamble launched by the upper house of parliament.

Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert has repeatedly labelled the NPD "an anti-democratic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-constitutional party," according to AFP.

Critics charge the proceedings will give the NPD, a party with only about 5,200 members, a national stage and that a ban could turn its members into martyrs for their racist cause.

The party, founded in 1964 as a successor to the neo-fascist German Reich Party, scored just 1.3 percent in 2013 national elections and has never crossed the five percent hurdle for entry into the national parliament.

However, it is represented in the state assembly of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the former communist East and in many town councils in the region.

It also has one seat in the European...